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Theosophy - Book 8- The Egyptian Wisdom in other jewish writings- part of Ancient Egypt- The light of the World by Gerald Massey
ANCIENT
EGYPT- THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD by Gerald
Massey ΔΔ
BOOK
- 8 -
THE EGYPTIAN WISDOM IN OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS
[Page 470] The Kamite mythos
of the old lost garden may be seen transforming
into Hebrew legendary lore when
Ezekiel describes an Eden that was sunk and buried
in the lowermost parts of the earth. “Thus saith
the Lord. ..When I cast him (Pharaoh) down to Sheol
with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees
of Eden, ...and all that drink water were comforted
in the nether parts of the earth. ...”,
“To whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness
among the trees of Eden ? Yet shalt thou be brought
down with the trees of Eden into the nether parts of
the earth; thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised”. (Ez.
xxxi. 15, 16, 18.) This is the garden of Eden in Sheol,
and Sheol is a Semitic version of the Egyptian Amenta.
That is why the lost Gan-Eden is to be found in the
nether parts of the earth as an outcast of the later
theology.
When the word Sheol in the Old Testament
is rendered in English by “the grave”, it
is inadequate times out of number. The Hebrew writers
were not always speaking or thinking of the grave when
they wrote of Sheol, which has to be bottomed in Amenta,
the divine nether-earth, not simply in the tomb. The
grave is not identical with hell, nor the pit-hole
with the bottomless pit. The pangs and sorrows of Sheol,
like the purging pangs of the Romish purgatory, have
to be studied in the Egyptian Ritual. Many
of the moanings
and the groanings
in the Psalms
are the utterances
of Osiris or
the Osiris
suffering in
Amenta. They
are the cries
for assistance
in Sheol. The
appeals in
the house of
bondage for
help from on
high, and for
deliverance
from afflictions and maladies
more than human,
were uttered
In Amenta before
they were heard in Sheol, and
the Psalmist
who first wrote
the supplications
on behalf of
the manes was
known as the
divine scribe
Taht before
the Psalms
in Hebrew were
ascribed to
David. The
speaker of
Psalm xvi.
is talking
pure Egyptian
doctrine in
Amenta concerning
his soul and
body when he
says, “My
flesh shall
dwell in safety,
for thou wilt
not leave my
soul in Sheol; neither wilt
thou suffer
thy holy one
to see corruption;
thou wilt show
me the path
of life; in
thy presence
is the fulness
of joy, in
thy right hand there are pleasures
for evermore”. As
we see from the Ritual, this is
the manes expressing his confidence
in the duration
of his personality,
the persistence
of his sahu
or mummy-soul
in [Page 471] Amenta,
and his hope of
being vivified
for ever by
the Holy Spirit
and led along
the pathway
of eternal
life by Horus
the Redeemer to the right hand of his
father, Atum-Ra. He
is the sleeper in Amenta when he says, “I
shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall
be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake” (Ps.
xvii. 15). The Osiris woke in Sekhem, where he
saw the likeness of his Lord who left his picture
there; his true likeness as the risen one transformed,
transfigured, and divinely glorified, that looked
upon the manes, smiling sun-wise through the defecating
mist of death, for the Osiris to come forth and
follow him. The speaker was in Amenta as the land
of bondage when the “cords of Sheol” were
bound about him. He was assimilated to the suffering
Horus, sitting blind and helpless in the utter
darkness, pierced and torn and bleeding from the
wounds inflicted on him by Sut, who had been his
own familiar friend, his twin-brother, and who
had turned against him and betrayed him to his
death. The most memorable sayings in the Psalms,
and the most misleading when misunderstood, are
uttered in this character of Osiris, who was the
typical victim in Amenta, where he was tormented
by the followers of Sut, the forsaken sufferer
who was piteously left to cry, “My God!
My God! Why hast thou forsaken
me ? Why
art thou so far from helping me?” The
sufferer is in Sheol, the miry pit, when he says, “I
sink in deep mire”.
“Deliver me out of the mire, and let not Sheol
shut her mouth upon me” (Ps. Ixix. 2,14, 15).
Sheol, then, is one with Amenta, and the drama with
its characters and teachings belongs to the mysteries
of Amenta, which are attributed to Taht, the Egyptian
psalmist, who is the great chief in Sekhem, the place
where Horus suffered or Osiris died. Taht was the writer
of the sayings attributed to Horus in his dual character
of the human sufferer in Amenta and of Horus-Tema,
the divine avenger of the sufferings that were inflicted
on Osiris by the “wicked”, the Sami, the
co-conspirators with Sut, the Egyptian Judas. This
will account for the non-natural imagery and hugely
inhuman language ascribed to the supposed historic
David, who as writer was primarily the psalmist Taht,
and who called down the divine wrath upon the accursed
Typhonians for what they had done in binding, torturing,
and piercing Horus (or Osiris) and pursuing him to
death.So
far as the language
of Taht remains
in the Psalms
of David, it
is inhuman
because the
characters
of the drama
were originally
non-human.
This is one
of the many
misrenderings
that have to
be rectified
by means of
the Egyptian Ritual, when we have
discriminated
between the
earth of time
and the earth
of eternity,
between the
denizens of
Judea and the
manes in Sheol,
and learned
that the Hebrew
and Christian
histories of
these mystical
matters have
been compounded
out of the
Egyptian eschatology.
It is noteworthy
that certain
of the Psalms,
in two different
groups (xlii.
to xlix.
and lxxxiv.
to lxxxviii.),
are specialized
as “Psalms
of the Sons
of Korah”. These
were the rebels, once upon a time,
who, according to Hebrew tradition,
disappeared when the earth
opened and swallowed them up alive.
This is a legend of Amenta. The
only earth that ever swallowed
human beings was the nether-earth
of Sheol; and if we take our stand
with the sons of Korah in
Amenta we can [Page
472] read these
Psalms and
see how they
should especially
apply to
those who were swallowed
by Sheol in
the nether-world. “One
thing”, says a commentator, “which
added to this surprising occurrence,
is that when Korah was swallowed
in the earth his sons were
preserved”.They went down to the pit in
death, but lived on as did the
manes in Amenta. The sons of Korah
are in Sheol. But, says the
speaker,“God will redeem my soul from the
power of Sheol” (Ps. xlix. 15). He exclaims, “Bring
me unto thy holy hill and to thy
tabernacles”. Psalm
xlv. is a Psalm addressed to the
anointed son, the king=the royal
Horus, who comes as a conqueror
of death and Sheol. Psalm xlvii.
is a song of the resurrection
from Amenta. “God
is gone up with a shout”, to sit upon his
holy throne, in the eternal
city “on his
holy mountain”, which
was the way up from the dark valley
for those who, like “the sons of Korah”, sank
into the nether-earth, but who
lived on to rise again and reach
the summit of the sacred mount.
The Kamite steps of ascent were
buried as a fetish figure in the
coffins with the dead for use,
typically, when they woke to life
in Amenta. It
is said to the Osiris in the Ritual, “Osiris,
thou hast received thy sceptre,
thy pedestal, and the flight of
stairs beneath thee”;
this was in readiness for his resurrection.
These images of the stand on which
the gods were elevated,
like Anup at the pole, the tat
of stability, and the steps of
ascent to heaven, were buried with
the mummy as emblems of divine
protection which are with him
when he emerges from the comatose
state of the dead. The steps thus
buried stand for the mountain of
ascent. We are reminded of
this by the Psalmist when he sings, “O
Lord, thou hast brought up my soul
from Sheol. Thou, Lord, of thy
favour hadst made my mountain
to stand strong” (Ps. xxx. 37) the mountain
that was imaged in the tomb by
the steps with the aid of which
the deceased makes the ascent
from Amenta, and can say, “I am the lord
of the stairs. I have made my nest
on the horizon” (Rit.,
ch. 85). The Pharaoh Unas exults
that the ladder or steps have been
supplied to him by his father,
Ra, as means of ascent to spirit
world. When
King Pepi makes his exodus from
the lower earth to the elysian
fields Sut sets up his maket,
or ladder, in Amenta by which
the manes reaches
the horizon; and, secondly, Horus
erects
his ladder
by which the spirit of Pepi reaches
up to heaven. This divides the
steps of ascent into halves
of seven each as these are figured
in the seven
steps of the solar boat. Thus the
total
number is fourteen,
as it was in the lunar mythos when
the eye of the full moon was attained
at the summit of fourteen
steps or top of the staircase.
The number, as may be explained,
was fifteen in the soli-lunar
reckoning of the month. Thus in
one computation
there were fifteen steps to the
ladder of ascent
from the depths of Amenta
to the summit
of the mount. Now, fifteen of the
Psalms (cxx. to cxxxiv.)
are termed “Psalms of degrees”. In
the Hebrew they are called “a Song of ascents”. In
the Chaldee they were designated “a song
that was sung upon the steps of
the abyss”. These
are the steps
from the abyss
or depths of
Sheol mentioned
by the speaker.
who says, “Thou shalt
bring me up
again from
the depths
of the earth” (Ps.
Ixxi. 20). “Out of the depths have
I cried unto
thee, O Lord” (Ps. cxxx.
I). Thus the
steps constituted
a means of
ascent from
Sheol or Amenta, [Page
473] and
in the song
of ascents
we can identify the staircase
of the great
god by which
the summit
of the mount
was attained.
The speaker
has dwelt long
in the death-dark
land. He will
lift up his eyes to the
mountains,
or the mount: “Unto
thee do I lift
up mine eyes,
O thou that
sittest in
the heavens”.
“The Lord hath chosen Zion: he hath desired it
for his habitation'' - as he had already done when his
name was Khnum, or Osiris, the lord of Sheni (Rit.,
ch. 36). The celestial mountain is the place where
the throne was prepared for the last judgment in the
mysteries of Amenta, and figured in the maat upon the
summit of the mount. It was there Osiris sat “in
his throne judging righteously as king for ever”. The
mount was also called the staircase of the great god.
Osiris is said to sit at the head of the staircase,
surrounded by his circle of gods (Rit., ch. 22 ). In
the pre-Osirian cult it was Atum-Ra who sat as the
great judge in the maat, the hall of truth, law, and
justice. As we have seen, the mount on high was also
imaged by other types of the ascent to heaven.
The speaker in
the song of ascents or the psalms
of fifteen degrees
is at the base of the mythical mount in Sheol = Amenta.
The lord whom
he addresses is upon
the summit of his holy
hill, just as Osiris
or Atum or Sebek, is the great god seated at the
head of the
staircase. In his
distress he cries unto the Lord for deliverance from
the enemy,
who is Sut the liar
and deceiver; “him
that hateth peace”.
“My soul”, he says, “hath long had
her dwelling with him that hateth peace. I am for peace”.
“Woe is me!” he cries, “ that I sojourn
in Meshech” (Ps. cxx. 5). Meshech, or meska in
the Egyptian, as a place-name signifies the place of
scourging and purifying in Suten-Khen. It is the Kamite
purgatory as a place of rebirth in Amenta (Rit., ch.
17)for the soul, on its resurrection
from the dead prior to the ascent
of the steps, the ladder, staircase, column, or mount.
On passing
through the sixth abode of Amenta
(Rit., chs. 72 and 149) the speaker pleads, “Let me
not be stopped at the meska; let not the wicked
have mastery over me”. “Let me join my
two hands together in the divine dwelling which
my father Atum hath given me, he who hath established
an abode for me above the earth, wherein is wheat
and barley of untold quantity, which the son of
my own body offereth to me there as oblations
upon my festivals”. And when the manes has
passed through the meska or place
of purifying he prays to be delivered
from the hells that await the damned. In Meshech or the meska the sufferer
says he will lift up his eyes unto the mountains
from whence his help shall come. The
mount is pluralized, but it is the summit
upon which stands the heavenly Jerusalem, “builded as a city that
is compact together, whither the tribes
go up, even the tribes of Іhuh, to give thanks
unto the Lord”. There were set “the
thrones for judgment, the thrones of
the house of David”, which are the twelve
thrones in
heaven, as
described in the book of Revelation.
The single mount is Zion.
the Egyptian
shennu, or
hetep, the mount of rest.
“For the Lord hath chosen Zion,
He hath desired it for His habitation;
This is my resting place for ever”. -Ps.
cxxxii.
On the
last of the
fifteen steps
of ascent a
call is made
upon the starry
luminaries
to praise the
Lord. “Bless
ye the Lord,
all ye [Page
474] servants
of the Lord,
which by night
stand in the
house of the
Lord. Lift
up your hands
to the sanctuary,
and bless the
Lord. The Lord bless thee
out of Zion” (Ps.
cxxxiv.). These
are they who
stand by night
around the
throne at the
top of the
steps, and
this last finishing
touch is very
definitely
astronomical.
As Egyptian,
there was an
upper circle
of the great spirits round the throne
upon the summit
of the mount,
who were called
the shennu,
and the mount
of the shennu = Mount Zion.
Under one of
its Egyptian
names the valley
of Amenta or
Sheol is
called “Akar”. This
valley of Akar we identify with
Achor, the
valley of
sorrow in the
Hebrew. “Achor's
gloomy vale” , is sung of in the Christian
hymn, and this
is the essential
character of
Akar. It has
been observed
by Renouf that
the notion
of obscurity
is connected
with Akar,
whereas the
notion of brightness
is essentially
associated
with the mount
(Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., March 7, 1893,
p. 223). The
two gates of
Akar are mentioned in the pyramid texts
of Pepi (line 72) as equivalent
in sense to
the two gates
of Seb or the earth (Renouf,
Rit., ch. 39, note). The difference
lies betwixt
the mythical
and eschatological application. The
gates of Seb refer to our earth,
and the gates
of Akar to
Amenta, the land of shades in the earth
of eternity. When the valley of
Achor is to
become a door
of hope it is in the wake of the solar
god who goes forth from the gate
of Akar to
the summit
of the mount. Israel was to be judged
and to make answer in the judgment
hall (which
stood at the
place of exit in the topography
of Amenta), “as
in the day when she (previously)
came up out of the land of Egypt”, which
was one and the same thing in the mythical
representation
of the Exodus (Hosea, ii. 15).
In fact, the supposed history is
identified with the
mythos by Esdras,
who portrays the last judgment,
which is to be as it was in the
time of Achan when he was doomed
die in the valley of Achor, the
Egyptian valley of the shadow in
Akar (2 Es. vii. 26-37). In this
valley was the sepulchre of Osiris,
betwixt the two mountains or horizons
of the west and east. So
the graves
of the Hottentot deity Heitsi-Eibib
were made
in a valley or narrow pass
between two
mountains, and from these
he, like Osiris,
rose again and made his transformation in the
tree of dawn.
The nature
of Achor is
indicated by Hosea when he says
of Israel,
(ii. 14, 15), “I
will allure
her and
bring her into the wilderness, and I will give
her the valley of Achor for
a door of hope,
and she
shall make answer in the judgment there”. It
was in Achor that the stoning
of Achan occurred,
in the
valley
of vengeance, and it is there that Israel was
to answer for
all her
iniquities.
Thus, whatsoever events had occurred
in Achor's
gloomy vale took place
in the
Akar or
Ati-kerti of the nether-earth, which was a place
of
passage for
the manes through
Amenta.
In the
distance lay the Aarru-paradise with the seven
cows
called the
providers of plenty resting in
the green fields of peace and
prosperity. The
vale of Akar led
to the Aarru-meadows,
and out of “these
arose the mountain
of the Lord,
upon the summit
of which was
the place of
rebirth in
the upper paradise,
the abode of
the blessed.
This is the
imagery made
use of by Isaiah
(Ixv. 9,
12): “Thus
saith the Lord:
I will bring
forth a seed
out of Jacob,
and out of
Judah an inheritor
of my mountain;
and my chosen [Page 475] shall
inherit it, and my
servants shall
dwell there.
And Sharon shall be a pasture for flocks,
and the valley of Achor a place
for herds to lie down in, for my
people that have sought me. But
ye that forsake the Lord, that
forget my holy mountain, that prepare
a table for fortune and
that fill up mingled wine unto
destiny, I will destine you to
the sword”. This
is the mountain of Amenta. Fortune
and Destiny are two Egyptian deities
who are mentioned here
by the name of
Gad and Meni, but only mentioned
to be abjured. As Egyptian the
goddess of fortune was Rannut,
who was also the giver of good
fortune in the harvest. The god of destiny or fate was Shai,
the apportioner of the lot. These are to be cast out and
their worshippers destroyed, but the mould of the imagery
remains in the valley of Achor. Indeed, the chart
of Judea looks like a copy of the scenery in Amenta
as it would be if the land had been originally
mapped out by the emigrants from Egypt. Amenta
and the Aarru-paradise, with its heaven on the
summit of the mount, have been repeated at innumerable
sacred places of the world, such as the garden
of the gods and the holy mountain of Shasta in
Colorado.
The first
resurrection
of two and the coming forth to day occur in the
valley of Akar. The valley
of passengers, the burial-place
for Gog and
his multitude; the valley of Elah,
the valley
of giants, the valley of the Rephaim, the valley
of death,
the valley of judgment, the valley
of Siddim,
the valley of Hinom - are all figures of Amenta
in the nether-earth of the mythos
and eschatology,
and therefore of the Hebrew Sheol. The “valley
of decision” Joel, iii. 14) is likewise
the valley of Amenta associated
with the mount of the Lord, the valley of the
lower earth in
which the great judgment was delivered
at the end of the world, or age, or cycle of time,
which
was annual in the mysteries, as
it still is in the Jewish ceremonies celebrated
at the end of
every year. The Lord is about to
judge the whole world in the valley of judgment,
here called Jehosaphat. “Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision,
for the day of the Lord is near
in the valley of decision. The
sun and the moon are darkened,
and the stars withdraw their shining. And the
Lord shall
roar (as the god in lion form - Rit.,
54, I) from
Zion,
and utter his voice from Jerusalem;
and the heavens
shall shake; but the Lord will
be a refuge unto his people, and a stronghold
to
the children
of Israel. So shall ye know
that I am the
Lord your God dwelling in Zion
my holy mountain. And it shall
come to pass in that day that
the mountain
shall drop down sweet wine, and
the hills shall
flow with milk, and all the brooks
of Judah shall run with waters, and a fountain
shall come
forth out of the house of the
Lord and water
the valley of the acacias”. Every feature
of this imagery is and ever had
been Egyptian. The valley of decision is the Egyptian
valley
of judgment in which the
great hall of mati, the house of
the Lord in the solar mythos, was
the judgment-seat. The lord
who sat in judgment was Atum, in
his lion form as lord of terrors.
The lord enthroned upon his
holy mountain was Atum-Ra upon
the mountain of Amenta which the
manes climbed for their rebirth
in heaven. The
mountain that souls
are commanded
to flee to
for safety
in the time
of trouble
and threatened
destruction - which
is repeated
in the New
Testament - is
the mountain
of the manes,
who fled to its summit in the likeness
of [Page
476] birds.
This is
expressed
in Psalm xi. “In
the Lord put
I my trust.
How say ye
to my soul flee
as a bird (or
birds) to your mountain. For
lo, the wicked
bend the bow;
they make ready
their arrow
upon the string,
that they may shoot in darkness at the
upright of heart. The
Lord is in
his holy temple,
the Lord, his
throne is in
heaven”, on
the summit
of the solar
mount to which
the hawk-headed
manes fled
and were out
of the reach
of the rebels,
the sebau, the wicked, the Sut-Typhonians
who pursued and shot at them in
the darkness, and
who were rained upon with fire and
brimstone and the burning blast,
or overwhelmed with the inundation in the Red
Sea or lake of
Putrata in Amenta. According to
the ancient Osirian mythos, there was a cleft
in the hill-side at
Abydos, through which the manes
passed as human-headed birds in the shape of hawks
or herons. This
was a proto-typal representation of the souls
fleeing for refuge to the mountain,
that was afterwards
repeated in Semitic legends, Hebrew and Arabic.
The typical valley, then, goes
with the mythical
mountain or mountains in
the Hebrew
writings. The valley of Amenta is the dwelling-place
of the manes,
which are represented as the
rephaim
who answer to the Egyptian repait.
The repait,
or pait, are the dead below the earth who are
in the custody of Seb. The rephaim
are the dead
in the Hebrew Sheol. In the day of vengeance,
says Isaiah, “it shall be as when the corn
is reaped and the ears are gleaned in the valley
of Rephaim”. In the valley of Amenta was
the field of divine harvest and
the vintage of vengeance. In tracing
the Israelites on their
journey out of Lower Egypt we shall
meet with the rephaim, who are
the giants and at the same
time shades of enormous stature.
Meanwhile, whatsoever battles were
fought or vast events occurred in
the valley of the rephaim, they
took place in the earth of the
dead, and not upon the upper
earth. The
giant king of Bashan was one of the rephaim;
Goliath,
the colossus,
was another of the rephaim; and these giants
dwelt in the
valley of the
rephaim. Consequently, the conquerors of the rephaim,
whether called Moses or Abraham,
Joshua or David,
who warred with the giants
as shades of
the dead in the valley of the rephaim, could no
more be historical characters than were the rephaim
themselves.
On entering the dark valley of Amenta
the Egyptian manes most assiduously seeks for
the place of refuge and safety provided by the
great god, and for the entrance to the ark or
tabernacle of Osiris-Ra. This is a secret covert
in the midst of Akar. Osiris is denominated “lord
of the shrine which standeth at the centre of
the earth” (Rit.ch.64). It is said by the
speaker in the Litany of Ra, “Here is the
Osiris; carry him into the hidden
sanctuary of Osiris, lord of eternity
who is under the care
of the two divine sisters that
give protection in the tomb! Carry
him into the hidden dwelling
where Osiris resides, and which
is in Amenta, the mysterious sanctuary
of the god at rest. Bear
him, open your arms
to him, stretch
out your hands
to him, take
off your veils
before him,
for he is the
great essence
whom the dead
spirits do
not know”, but
to whom they
are indebted
for the resurrection
to new life.
In the Psalms
the tabernacle or
sanctuary in
Sheol takes
the place of
the ark or
secret shrine
of Osiris in
Amenta. “Lord,
who shall sojourn
in thy Tabernacle
? ,. (Ps. xv.
I). “In
the court of his tabernacle shall
he hide me” (
xxvii. 5).[Page 477] “In
Salem is his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion” (Ps. lxxvi.2).
The resurrection of the manes took
place in Sheol or Amenta. And it
is as the risen manes in Sheol
that the speaker seeks to dwell
in the sanctuary of the Lord and
to contemplate his temple. Hence
he says, “In the covert of his tabernacle
(or dwelling) shall he hide me.
He shall lift me upon a rock. I
will offer in his tabernacle
sacrifices of joy” (Ps. xxvii.). Such sacrifices
or offerings are made to Osiris
in his shrine of earth or tabernacle
in Amenta, as shown by
the vignettes to the Ritual. This
was the “stronghold
of salvation to his anointed” in the earth
of eternity. This we take to be
the tabernacle, sanctuary, or house
of the lord in Sheol, of which
it is said, “Who shall sojourn in the tabernacle?”.
“In the day of trouble he shall keep me secretly
in his pavilion. In the covert of his tabernacle shall
he hide me” (Ps. xxvii. 5, 6), “in the
place where the divine glory dwelleth” (Ps. xxvi.
6).
The mummy-Osiris
in Amenta is the figure of a
sleeping deity. This,
as the mummy-Ptah or Putah, we hold to have been
the prototype
of the sleeping Buddha.
The mummy-image of divinity was continued in
Osiris-Sekeri.
He is the inert in
matter, the sleeping or resting divinity, the breathless
one; Urt-Hat,
the god of the non-beating
heart, the silent Sekeri. Such also is the
divine sleeper
who is piteously
appealed to by the human sufferer in Sheol, and who
is identical
with Osiris sleeping
in Amenta. The speaker in the Psalms cries “unto
the Lord with his voice”,
“Arise, O Lord! save me, O my God”,
“Arise, O God, judge the earth. O God, keep not
thou silence. Hold not thy peace, and be not still,
O God” ( Ps. lxxxii. 8; lxxxiii. I ). The waking
preceded the great judgment. “Arise, O Lord,
in thine anger; lift up thyself against the rage of
mine adversaries, and awake for me. Thou hast commanded
judgment” (Ps. vii. 6). “O Lord, when thou
awakest thou shalt despise their image”.
“Awake; why sleepest thou, O Lord ? Rise
up for our help” (Ps; xliv. 23, 26). “Then
the Lord awaked as one out of
a sleep, and he smote his adversaries
backward” (Ps.
lxxviii. 65). This is the awaking of
the god as Amsu, whip
in hand, when he arises and asserts
his sovereignty over all the opposing
powers. The speaker is in
the position of the Osiris, as
the mummy sleeping in Amenta when he
pleads with the protecting power, “Keep
me as the apple of the eye. Hide
me under the shadow of thy wings
from the wicked that
spoil me, my deadly enemies that compass me about”.
“As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake” (Ps.
xvii. 8-15). In these passages Osiris the mummy-god
as sleeper in Amenta and the Osiris as a manes are
both represented, and are both distinguishable each
from the other. The speaker in Psalm xvii. is in Sheol
waiting to awake in the living likeness of this redeemer
from death, and he is surrounded by “the wicked”, who
are the “deadly enemies” that compass him
about. He cries, “Deliver my soul from the wicked
which is thy sword '' - as power of punishment (xvii.
13). It is the wicked who come upon the sufferer “to
eat up his flesh”, not as cannibals on earth,
but as evil spirit-powers of prey (Ps. xxvii. 2). The
opponents of the sun
and the manes
appear in the
Psalms as the
adversary and
the adversaries.
The individual
adversary is
discriminated
from the [Page
478] adversaries.
Also the individual
adversary is
reproduced
in the two
characters
of the Apap-dragon
and of Sut or Satan, once
the familiar
friend or twin
brother of
the good Osiris,
and afterwards
his betrayer
and inveterate
personal enemy.
Now, the adversaries
of Osiris,
or of souls
in Amenta,
include the
Sebau, and
these are the “wicked” by
name, for the word in Egyptian
signifies the
profane, impious,
blasphemous,
culpable, or
wicked. They
rise up from
Amenta as the
powers of darkness
in revolt,
but are for
ever driven
back into their
native night
by Horus or
Ra, Taht or
Shu. These are the wicked of whom it
is said in
the Psalm, “They
shall return or be driven back
to Sheol” (Ps.
ix. 17).
The
comparative
process shows
that, like
Taht, the Psalmist opens in Amenta,
the place
of the wicked who have no
power to “stand
in the judgment. .The “wicked” in
Amenta are
the adversaries
of the sun
and the soul
of man. These
are the rebels
who for ever rise in impotent
revolt against
the Lord and
his anointed,
Osiris-Ra
and Horus in the Ritual, Іhuh the father-god
and David
the beloved
in the Psalms.
The “wicked” rage
against the
Lord and his
anointed,
saying, “Let
us break their
bands asunder
and cast away
their cords
from us” (Ps.
ii. 3). These
are the “cords of death”, the “cords
of the wicked” (Ps. cxxix. 4), the
cords with
which the manes
are fettered
in the land
of bondage
and the depths
of Sheol. The Lord that sitteth in
the heavens
has these children
of failure
in derision.
He has set his son as king
upon the holy
hill of Zion,
who is to break
them with a
rod of iron and dash them in
pieces like
a potter's
vessel. These
are they of
whom it is said to the Lord, “Thou
hast broken
the teeth of the wicked”. That is in
defence of the sufferer
in Sheol, who
exclaims, “I
cry unto the
Lord with my
voice, and
he answereth
me out of his
holy hill.
I laid me down in death and slept; I
awaked, for
the Lord sustaineth
me” (
Ps. iii. 4,
5 ). Osiris
the typical
sufferer in
Amenta was
imaged as the mummy bound up in the
bandages of burial. As
Osiris the
mummy he was
the Karest
or prototypal
Corpus Christi. As Osiris-Sekeri he was
the coffined one.
As Osiris-Sahu
he rose again
in a spiritual
body. As Osiris-tat
he was a figure
of eternal
stability.
For reasons
now to be adduced,
Osiris, or
the Osiris, represents that typical sufferer
whose cries
and ejaculations
are to be heard
ascending from
Amenta in the Egyptian Ritual
and from Sheol
in the Hebrew
Psalms.
David pleading
in the cave
is equivalent to Osiris crying
in the caverns
of Sut in Amenta.
He says, “I cry with my
voice unto the Lord. With my voice
unto the Lord
do I make my
supplications.
I said, Thou
art my refuge,
my portion
in the land
of the living” (he
being in Sheol, the land of the
dead). “I
am brought very low. Deliver me
from my persecutors.
Bring my soul
out of prison” (Ps. cxlii.).
The prison here is identical with
the deep, the pit, the miry clay
of Sheol, elsewhere specified.
The sufferer in Amenta is Osiris
or Horus in the Egyptian eschatology.
He is also the Osiris as
the suffering manes. Both have
to be taken into account in tracing the sufferer in Sheol. He enters
Amenta as a prison-house. He prays
that it may be opened for him to
come forth, so that he [Page 479] may
be finally
established
with those
who have secured
a place among
the stars that never set, and who are
called the masters
of eternity. He
cries, “O Ra, open the earth! Traverse
Amenta and sky! Dissipate our darkness! O Ra,
come to us!” (Book of Hades, 4th div. tablets
2, 7, and 8). Amenta or Sheol was the prison-house
of the soul in death, and the soul of the deceased
is portrayed as a prisoner in the bandages of
the mummy, like Osiris in the Kâsu. The
Osiris, says to the warders of the prisons, “May
I not sit within your dungeons, may I not fall
into your pits” (Rit., ch. 17). Horus, the
deliverer of the “spirits in prison”, comes
to set the prisoners free from their sepulchres,
to dissipate the darkness and open all the pathways
to the land of light. In the chapter by which
the prison-house of Amenta is opened to the soul
and to the shade of the person, that he may
come forth by day and have the mastery over his
feet, the speaker prays that the eye of Horus
may deliver his soul. He cries to the keepers, “Imprison
not my soul, keep not in custody my shade. Let
the path be open to my soul. Let it not be made
captive, by those who imprison the shades of the
dead” (Rit.,ch.92). Horus is the Kamite
prototype of the chosen one, called the servant
by Isaiah, who came “for a light of the
Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners
from the dungeon and them that sit in darkness,
out of the prison-house” (Is. xlii. 7). It
is not pretended that mortal Horus was born on earth of a
mother who was a human virgin in the
house of bread at Annu, or that he lived as Unbu
the branch at Nazareth or its Kamite equivalent.
Such localities in the Ritual are in Amenta, and
the transactions take place there, not on this
earth. There was the prison-house of death, and
from thence the resurrection to a future life
by transformation of the human soul into an immortal
spirit, as it was represented in the greater and
most solemn mysteries.
When the mortal entered
Amenta, it was in the likeness of Osiris, who
had been bodily dismembered in his death, and
who had to be re-constituted to rise again as
the spirit that never died. The mortal on earth
was made up of seven constituent parts. The Osiris
in Amenta had seven souls, which were collected,
put together and unified to become the ever-living
one. The deceased in the image of the ba-soul
asks that he may be given his new heart to rest
in him (Rit., ch. 26). He
becomes a sahu, or glorified body (ch. 47). He pleads that
the way may be made for his soul,
his khu (glory), his shade, and his ka (chs. 91
and 92). These have to be united in the likeness
of the typical divine soul which was personalized
as Horus , the son of Ra, in whose image the spirits
of the just made perfect finally became the children
of God. When the deceased enumerates his souls,
he is a manes in Amenta, and! it follows that
when the speaker in the Psalms does the same,
he is in Sheol, the Hebrew. Amenta, not on earth,
and therefore is neither a King David nor any
other mortal. This identifies the doctrine as
Egyptian.
As we have seen, man, formed in
the image of God, had seven souls.
Seven souls were
assigned to Atum-Ra, and the human
being who was made in his likeness
had seven component parts.
These were described as the ka,
the l or ego; the ba a human-headed
soul; the hati, or breathing
heart; the sahu, or spiritual body
, the khu [Page
480] or glory;
the khabit, or shade; and finally,
the perfect spirit. At least six
of these can be identified in
a passage of the sixteenth
Psalm. “Because
he (the Lord) is at my right hand,
I shall not be moved. Therefore
my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh
(the mummy-form) also shall dwell
in safety. For
thou wilt not
leave my soul in Sheol; neither
wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt
show me the path of life”. In this passage we
can perceive a reference to the
hati or breathing heart, the khu
or glory, the sahu or mummy-form,
the ba-soul, the Horus-spirit,
and the ka. If the khabit or shade
had been mentioned, there
would have been seven altogether,
which constituted the totality
of a future personality. The
speaker in Psalm vii, had said, “Let the
enemy pursue my soul” (or human-headed ba); “let
him tread my life (ankhu) down
to the earth, and lay my glory
(khu) in the dust”, but
for all this he will be avenged
upon his adversaries in the judgment.
The khu is the
particular soul
of the seven that was known as
the luminous one, or the glory-the
soul that was brought up from
Sheol or Amenta when it had attained
the glory or become one of the
glorified. At this stage
the speaker in the Ritual says, “Here am
I; I come, and am glorified and
filled with soul and power” ( ch. 94). He
has attained the glory of the khu.
In the book of Psalms the speaker,
who has passed through
Sheol, says, “Thou hast brought up my soul
from Sheol”.
“Thou hast girded me with gladness, to the end
that my glory may sing praise to thee” (Ps. xxx.
3, I I, 12). “Awake up, my glory” (Ps. lvii.
8). “I will sing praises with my glory” (Ps.
cvii. I ). The language is akin to that of the manes
in the Ritual, who says he may be buried in the deep,
deep grave and be bowed down to the region of annihilation,
yet he shall rise again and be glorified ( ch. 30,
A), or he will attain the glory of the venerable khu.
Sheol is a land of darkness and the shadow of death.
So is Amenta, until lighted up with the presence of
the sun by night in its nether firmament. Sheol is
the place of the rephaim or shadows of the past. The
rephaim are to be found in Amenta as giants, huge shades
of enormous stature; types of terror, made more formidable
by their exaggerated size. Sheol
is the place of the shades, the under-world
to which the souls of the departed went, and from
which the dead were
summoned by
the consulters of oboth or familiar spirits. It includes
purgatory and hell,
the Ethiopic
Siol and Assyrian Saul. There were deeper
abysses in the abyss, and chambers of death in the
house of death. “Tophet” is
another Hebrew name for Sheol. “A Tophet
is prepared of old. ...deep and wide ” (Is.
xxx. 33), which may be traced to the
Egyptian Tepht, a name of the abyss,
the cavern of Apap or hole of the serpent.
It was from Amenta, the hidden earth,
that the ghosts of the dead were summoned
by the magi, or rekhi-khet, not as evil
demons, but as pure, wise spirits. It
is from this nether earth of Amenta
that the soul of Samuel is supposed
to have ascended when invoked by
the witch, pythoness, or  of
Endor. “And
the woman said unto Saul, I see a god
(or Elohim) coming up out of the earth”, but
which earth
of the two
is not stated
in the Hebrew (1. Samuel, xxviii. 13).
In several
of the Psalms
the singer
utters the
cries of a soul that suffers purgatorial
pains
in Sheol. As
we have seen,
the Egyptian
purgatory is
a [Page 481] domain
in Amenta called
the meska=meshek.
It was a place
of spiritual
rebirth by
purgation - a
meaning that
survives in
the name of
purgatory.
This is described
in the Ritual
(ch. 17)
as “ the
place of scourging and purifying”.
“Let not the Osiris advance into the valley of
darkness”.
“Let not the Osiris enter into the dungeon of
the captives”.
“Let him not fall among those who would drag
him behind the slaughtering block of the executioner” are
cries of the manes.
Amenta is the land of monsters,
chief of which in the mythos is the Apap-dragon,
which has its lair in the lake of outer darkness. In
Amenta
the crocodiles have to be repelled ( ch. 31). Also
the serpent Seksek (ch. 35); Apshait the devourer
of the dead (ch.36); the serpent Rekrek (ch. 39); the
serpent Haiu (ch. 40); the serpent Abur (ch. 42);
the crocodile-dragon in the land of bondage (ch. 72);
the raging bull (ch. 78); the devouring monsters
(ch. 80); the howling dogs (ch. 102); the piercing
serpent (ch. 108); the black boar of Sut (ch. 112).
Baba, the eternal devourer of the condemned, is the
monster most eminent in the eschatology. “Deliver me from the crocodile
(or
devouring
monster) of this land of bondage” (Rit., ch.
72). “Grant that I may come forth and have the
mastery of my two feet. Let me advance to the goal
of heaven”.
“Deliver me from Baba, who feeds upon the livers
of princes, on the day of the great reckoning”. These
are also the cries of the manes.
The appeals for divine
protection during the passage of Amenta and for deliverance
from the pangs of purgatory and the terrors of the
hells are echoed in the land of Sheol. “Many
bulls have compassed me. Strong bulls of Bashan have
beset me round. They gape upon me with their mouth (Ps.
xxii. 12, 21). “Thou hast sore broken us in the place of jackals,
and covered us with the shadow
of death” (Ps.
xliv. 19). “My soul is among lions. I lie
among them that are set on fire” (Ivii.
4). “Deliver not the soul of thy turtle
unto the wild beast” (lxxiv. 19). There
is a description in the Ritual
of the torn and mutilated Osiris
encompassed by the howling dogs
of Amenta. “Salutation
to thee, Ur-ar-set, in that voyage
of heaven and the disaster in
Tennu, when those dogs were gathered
together, not
without giving voice”. The dog is a prominent
type of the devourer in Sheol.
The sufferer exclaims, “Deliver
my soul from the sword; my only
one (or my soul) from the power
of the dog” (Ps.
xxii 20). The dog in Amenta represents
the devourer “who
lives upon the damned. His face
is that of a hound and his skin
is that of a man. Eternal devourer
is his name” (Rit., ch. 17). He seizes upon
souls in the dark, and is therefore
said to be invisible, as a type
of very great terror. Osiris
bound as a mummy in Amenta prays
to be released by the god who had
tied the cords about him in
the earth. That is, by Seb, the
god of earth, who was custodian
of the mummies in the earth,
whose hands and feet were bound
up typically in Amenta in the likeness
of the earthly mummy. The
sufferer in Sheol cries, “My God! Why hast
thou forsaken me? All they that
see me laugh me to scorn. They
shoot out the lip, they wag
the head, saying, “He trusted on
the Lord that he would deliver
him”.
“Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
For dogs have encompassed me. The assembly of evil-doers
have enclosed me.They
bound my [Page 482] hands
and my feet. They look
and stare upon
me. They part my garments among them, and upon my vesture
do they
cast lots”. “Yea, mine own familiar friend in
whom I trusted,
which did eat
of my bread,
hath lifted
his heel
against me”.
“I looked for some to take pity, but there was
none; and for comforters, but I found none”. They
gave me also “gall for my meat; and in my thirst
they gave me vinegar to drink”. These are the
pitiful cries and ejaculations of the suffering Osiris
or Horus, the saviour in the Egyptian wisdom, and these
scenes, circumstances, and sayings have been reproduced
as the very foundations of the “history” in
the Gospels. They were confessedly found among “the
parables and dark sayings of old”, which, as the
scribe admits, “we have heard and known and our fathers
have told us”. That is, they were found in the
writings of the divine scribe and psalmist Taht, which
were preserved in the psalms of the Hebrew David. The
matter of the mythology goes with the mythical characters,
and this has been mistaken for prophecy that was to
be fulfilled in some future human history.
There
is a chapter
in the Ritual on not letting the mummy
decay - that is, the mummy
as a type of
the personality continued in a future
life (ch. 154). In this the mummy-god
Osiris is addressed
as the father by the
Osiris as the
manes in Amenta. The speaker says,
Hail to thee, my father Osiris ! Thy limbs are
lasting, thou dost not
know corruption”. And as with
the god so is it with the manes. In spite
of death, he says, “I am, I am; I live;
I live; I grow, I grow; and when awake I shall awake,
I shall awake in peace.
I shall not see corruption. I shall
not be destroyed in my bandages”.
“My limbs are lasting for ever. I do not rot.
I do not putrefy. I do not turn to worms. My flesh
is firm; it shall not be destroyed; it shall not perish
in the earth for ever”. (Ch. 154, Naville.) In
the parallel passages of the Psalms the speaker
says, “My heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth;
my flesh shall dwell in safety (or confidently).
For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither
wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life”.
“As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness.
I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake”. (Ps.
xvi. and xvii.) The “flesh” in the Psalm takes
the place of the mummy in the Ritual. The speaker
in the Psalms “cries out” continually,
and calls on the ka or image of the eternal, in the
likeness of which he expects to rise again and live
as Horus or as Jesus the beloved son.
Another type
of the beloved son in Sheol is the turtle-dove. The
speaker cries to the god of his salvation, “Oh,
deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the wild
beast. The dark places of the earth are full of the
habitations of violence” (Ps. lxxiv. 19, 20).
The soul of the turtle-dove is the dove that was a
symbol of the soul. When
the transformation from the mummy was made in
Amenta the
deceased became bird-headed as a
soul, and thus assumed the likeness
of Ra the holy
spirit. This bird of soul in the later eschatology
was the hawk, the sign of a soul
that was considered
to be male, the soul of god the father. The dove
of Hathor was an earlier type of
a soul derived
from the mother. This is the turtle-dove of the
Psalmist. In one of the Egyptian
drawings the
soul is portrayed in the process of issuing from
the mummy in the shape of a dove,
instead of
the usual hawk. [Page 483] Both
are emblems of
the
risen soul, but the dove in monumental
times was almost
superseded by the hawk of
Ra and Horus.
In the Ritual snares are set and a net
is prepared
to catch and destroy the manes. The deceased prays
that he may not be taken like a
foolish fish
in the net. In the Psalms the speaker, who is David
in the cave, exclaims, “They have prepared
a net for my steps” (Ps. lvii.). “Pluck
me out of the net that they have
privily laid for me” (Ps. xxxi. 4). These
are the liers in wait (Ps. v.
8) who privily lurk to catch the
passing souls. In vignettes to
the Ritual the souls of the ignorant
are shown in the guise of fishes
being caught in the net by
cynocephali, who are allowed
to capture them
because of their ignorance.
The waters
of the deep were in Amenta. The deep
is identical with the pit, the pit with Sheol,
and Sheol with Amenta. “Save me, O God;
for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink
in deep mire, there is no standing. I am come
into deep waters where the floods overflow me”.
“Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink.
Let me be delivered from them that
hate me. Let not the water-fIood
overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up”. In
the Psalms the Hebrew deity is he who sitteth on the
waters. “The Lord sitteth on the flood;
yea, the Lord sitteth as king for
ever”.
“He hath founded the earth upon the waters and
established it upon the floods” (Ps. XXIV.2). “Even
the Lord upon many waters”. This is the picture
of Osiris in Amenta sitting on his throne of the waters
as lord of all the earth. The earth itself is imaged
by the lotus rising from the water as the mount arose
from out the Nun, and the water springs up and flows
from underneath the seat which is the throne of the
god. The representation in the great hall of judgment
is precisely the same as that described in the book
of Revelation: “And he showed me a river of water
of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne
of God” (Rev. xxii. I ). The action of the god
throughout nature is imaged as a welling and a flowing
forth of water from its secret source. Іhuh
the Lord is described by Jeremiah as “the
fountain of living waters” (ch. xvii. 13).
When it is said that the Lord sitteth
on the flood (Ps. xxix. 10,
II), or that “Ouranos
(Ουρανδς)is the throne
of God” (Matt. v.
34, 35), the imagery is Egyptian,
with certain features defaced.
The Ouranos is heaven as the celestial
water, upon which the lord has
been left sitting without
the solar boat. The lord as Іhuh
is one with Atum-Huhi or Ra, who
is described as making his voyage
nightly on the Urnas = Ouranos,
leaving the trail of other-world
glory in the river of the Milky
Way. It is the same solar deity
that rode through the deserts of
the under-world, but again the
modus operandi is omitted In this
way the Egyptian imagery has
been divorced from the natural
phenomena which it was intended
to portray. In the Ritual the
waters are described as bursting
forth in an overwhelming deluge; “Knowing
the deep waters is my name”, exclaims
the sinking manes ( ch. 64). “Do thou save
me!” he cries to the Lord. Then he exults
in not being one of those who drown. “Blessed
are they that see the bourne. Beautiful
is the god of the motionless heart
(Asar), who causeth
the stay of the overflowing waters. Behold!
there cometh
forth the lord of life, Osiris my support, who abideth
day by
day. I embrace
the sycamore, I am [Page 484] united
to the sycamore”. The
tree is a type of stability and
safety in Amenta. In Sheol the refuge of the sinking
soul is depicted
amidst the waste of waters as the
everlasting rock, but both have one and the same significance
as the means of safety from the
flood.
The mummy
sleeping in Amenta as the god or
as the manes waits the resurrection there. Horus wakes
the
manes in their coffins for the
coming forth, when they are freed from the cerements,
which he rends
asunder. This resurrection is attained
in Sheol when the speaker says, “I will extol
thee, O Lord, for thou hast raised me up. Thou hast
loosed my sackcloth and girded
me with gladness,
to the end that my glory (the khu)
may sing praise to thee and not be silent” (Ps.
xxx.). In the Kamite resurrection there was a change
from
the earthly body. The bandages
of burial were cast aside and the sahu mummy was invested
in
the robe of immortality. In fact,
to be invested thus was to become a spiritual being.
The “glory”, as
one of the Egyptian seven souls
called the khu, was now attained
by the Osiris in the course of
his being reconstituted. Salvation
for the Egyptian was being saved
from the fate of the irredeemably
wicked, the doom of the second
death, which was annihilation. Salvation
was continuity
of life hereafter, and this was only attainable by
the righteous - those
who did the right and acted justly,
those who
effected the truth of the word
in their own
life and pursued it through Amenta. They attained eternal
life by personal, not by imputed,
righteousness.
Hence the deceased pleads
his righteousness;
before the lord of righteousness in the
great hall
of righteousness. He pleads not what he believes,
but what he has done. “I have done that
which maat (the law) prescribeth,
and that which pleases the gods.
I have propitiated the god with
that which he loveth. I have given
bread to the hungry, water to the
thirsty, clothes to the naked,
a boat to the shipwrecked”.
“I am one of those to whom it is said, Come,
come in peace, by those who look upon him” - that
is, the divine company of the gods. He passes in peace,
and is invested with the robe of the righteous on account
of his own righteousness. This is the doctrine of the
Ritual, and it is likewise the doctrine of the Psalms. “Answer
me when I call, O God of my righteousness”.( Ps. iv.
I). “Judge me, O Lord according to my righteousness
and to mine integrity” (Ps. vii. 8). “As
for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness” (Ps.
xvii. 15). “The Lord rewardeth me according to
my righteousness” (Ps. xviii. 20). This
is not Christian doctrine, but it is Jewish,
because it was Egyptian. Personal
righteousness
is pleaded in the Psalms, the same as in the Ritual. “Judge
me, O Lord.. according to my righteousness” (Ps.
vii. 8). “The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness” (Ps. xviii. 24). In
the Kamite judgment hall the speaker
says, “I
have done the righteousness of
a lord of righteousness. There
is not a limb in me which is
void of righteousness” (ch.
125). This, as we interpret the
Hebrew version, is the position
of the speaker in Sheol who is
awaiting judgment amidst the trials
and the terrors that beset the
manes in the caverns of Sut, through
which he has to grope his way.
On arriving at the judgment hall
the Osiris says, “Hail
to thee, mighty god, lord of righteousness..
I am come to thee, O my Lord;
I have brought myself that I may
look upon thy glory”. He pleads
in presence of those whose natural
[Page 485] prey is the
souls of the wicked, “devouring
those who harbour mischief and
swallowing their blood, upon the
day of searching examination
in presence
of the good Osiris. Behold
me; I am come to you void of wrong, without
fraud; let me not be declared guilty;
let not the issue be against me. I subsist
upon righteousness.
I sate myself with uprightness
of heart. I have propitiated the god
with that which he loveth.
I am come, and am awaiting that
inquisition be made of righteousness” (ch. 125). In the
Psalms “God is the judge” .(Ps. vii.
II). “Righteousness and judgment are the
foundations of his throne” (Ps. xcvii. 2,
xcviii. 2). “Thou sat test in thy throne
judging righteously” (Ps. ix. 4). “The
Lord sitteth as king for ever. He hath prepared
his throne for judgment, and he shall judge the
world in righteousness” (Ps. ix. 7, 8).
In one form of the mythos Sut and Osiris, in the
other Sut and Horus, are born twin brothers. Sut
becomes the adversary of Osiris, the Good Being.
This conflict of the two opponent powers reappears
in the Psalms as well as in the book of Job. “Yea,
mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,
which did eat my bread, hath lifted up his heel
against me (Ps. xli. 9-11). But thou, O Lord,
have mercy upon me, and raise me up, that I may
requite them. By this I know that thou delightest
in me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over
me”.
“It was thou, a man mine equal, my companion
and my familiar friend. We
took sweet counsel together, we walked in the
house of God
with the throng”.
“He hath put forth his hands against such as
were at peace with him; he hath profaned his covenant.
His mouth was smooth as butter, but his heart was war;
his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn
swords” (Ps. Iv.20, 21). Nothing could more aptly
reproduce the figure of fact as a figure of speech
than the quotation from the Psalmist to the effect
that he. the intimate friend and very brother, had “lifted
his heel against” the Christ, the Lord's anointed.
In the double figure of Horus and Sut they are twinned
together back to back and therefore heel to heel. David
and the adversary are equivalent to Osiris and Sut,
or to Horus and Sut in another phase of the mythos,
the twin brothers being characters in both.
When Sut
and the Sebau had compassed the death of Osiris, a
day of dissolution followed the great disaster. There
was an overthrowal of the pillars - the tat-pillar at
the centre of all, and the four supports at the four
corners. Then Horus came as the avenger of his father
and as the judge of the wicked, who after trial were
annihilated on the highways of the damned. The tat
was re-erected, and the four pillars (posts or flagstaffs)
were set up once more “on the night of setting
up the pillars of Horus and of establishing him as
heir of his father's property”.
This
was at the time when Horus, as Har-Tema, came
to judge the adversaries of his
father Osiris
(Rit., ch. 18). A fragment from this would seem
to have strayed into the 75th Psalm,
like many other
wandering words that have lost their senses. “When
I shall find the set time, I will
judge uprightly. The earth and all the inhabitants
thereof are
dissolved. I have set up the pillars
of it” - which
looks as if the Osiris deceased
in Sheol were speaking in the character of Horus who
re-erected
the pillars. In the Ritual the
dissolution and re-establishing of the earth by setting
up [Page 486] the pillars, immediately
follows
the battle with the Sebau, the Apap, and Sut; and in
the preceding
psalm (lxxiv.) the war with the
dragon is described. “Thou
breakest the heads of the dragons
in the waters”.
“Thou breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces;
thou gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting
the wilderness”. The dragons in the psalm are
the evil crocodiles in the Ritual.
A profound study
of the Ritual reveals the fact that the wisdom of Egypt
was the source and fountain-head of the books of wisdom
assigned to Moses and David, to Solomon and Jesus;
and also proves the personages or characters to have
been Egyptian. It
is chiefly the wisdom bf Egypt that gives a value to
the Hebrew writings, as will be indubitably
demonstrated. In Psalm xxiv. there
is a glorification of the coming king of glory:
7. Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King of Glory shall come in.
8. Who is the King of Glory ?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
9. Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
Yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King of Glory shall come in.
10. Who is the King of Glory ?
The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of Glory.
This king
of glory was
the sun-god
in the astronomical
mythology. The Hebrew repeats the
king of glory,
the gates,
and the doors,
but omits the astronomical foundation;
and in this way the
wisdom of Taht
was deprived
of its scientific
value. But who is this
king of glory
? and what are the gates that are called
upon to open
and let him in ? As the “Lord of hosts” we know him for
Іao-Sabaoth, lord of the seven
great spirits; therefore he is
the solar god; but we must turn
to the Ritual to understand the
nature of the gates. There are
thirty-six altogether, corresponding
to the thirty-six decans of the
zodiac. At the same time the gates
are thirty-six doors in the
great house of Osiris. Chapter
145 is devoted to the passage of
the sun-god through twenty-one
of these celestial gates. The sun-god
is the king of glory in the Ritual.
In “the
book that was made on the birthday
of Osiris”, in
which “glory
is given to the inviolate one”, Taht, the
Kamite psalmist, sings, “Opened be the gates
of heaven! Opened be the gates
of earth! Opened be the
gates of the east! Opened be the gates of the west! Opened
be the gates of the southern and of
the northern sanctuaries! Opened
be the gates and thrown wide open
be the portals as Ra ariseth
from the mount of glory, the swift
of speed and beautiful in his rising,
and almighty through
what he hath done”.
“Glory to thee, O Ra, lord of the mount of glory”. (Rit.,
ch. 129.) The gates and doors are those that open as
the solar god comes forth at dawn. He is the king of
glory; these are the gates of glory that were opened
on the mount of glory “at the beautiful coming
forth of his powers”.
“It is the gate and the two doors and openings
through which Father Atum issueth to the eastern horizon
(or mount) of heaven”. (Rit., ch. 17.) That is
Atum-Huhi= Іhuh. The mythology is absolutely [Page
487] necessary all through for us to understand
the
eschatology,
whether in its Egyptian guise or Hebrew disguise.
When
the Psalmist says, “The Lord is my shepherd”, it
has become a mere phrase. The Egyptians presented the
portrait. Horus was the lord as leader of the flock
and guardian of the fold, because he represented the
first who rose again from the dead, though not at any
particular historic date. Amsu-Horus, with his crook
in hand, shepherded the flocks of Ra beyond the grave. After
the resurrection
in Amenta he says to his first four followers, who
are called
his children, “Now
let my fold be fitted for me as one victorious
against all those adversaries who would not that
the right should be done to me, the only one” (Rit.,
ch. 97). He is the “master of the champaign” and “of
the inundation”, and therefore of the green
pastures and the still waters of
life. Horus, the son of god, came
into the world as shepherd
of his father's sheep, to lead
them through the darkness of Amenta
to the green pastures and still
waters of the final paradise upon
Mount Hetep in the heaven of eternity.
It was not supposed
that he came to secure the Jew
his cent. percent., or the Christian
capitalist the power to rob the
workers of the fruits of their
labour, or the Boers and Belgians
to eat up the aborigines and
lie down as loafers in the still
pastures of their stolen lands.
Psalm
xxiii. contains a description of the green
fields of pasture and the still
waters that
run through that paradise of plenty, peace,
and rest:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall
not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still
waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death (Amenta or Sheol),
I will fear no evil: for thou art
with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of
the Lord for ever.
The staff
of Amsu was
a symbol of
Osiris who
rose again
as Horus. It was buried
with the deceased,
and is found
in the oldest
coffins together
with other
weapons that
were interred
with the dead
as types of
a protecting power. “The
Osiris receiveth
the Amsu staff
wherewith
he got round
the heaven” (Rit.,
ch. 130..). This elsewhere is called
the palm of
Amsu. It was
the support
of the Osiris
in life and
in death. This
psalm is one
of those that
have been least
denuded of
the original
object-pictures.
The valley
of the shadow
of death is
the Ar-en-
Tet or valley of the dead in the Ritual,
where those
who suffer
the second
death are buried
for ever (Rit.,
ch. 19) by
the great annihilator
Seb. Horus
in one character
is the good
shepherd, but
the lord, as
leader in the
green pastures,
is the bull
of the seven cows, who are
the providers
of plenty.
He is called the lord of the pastures,
or fields of
the bull, the
green meadows
of Aarru. He
also says, “I
am the bull,
the lord of
the gods”. This
answers to “The Lord
is my shepherd; I shall not want”.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures”, says
the Psalmist. The speaker in the Ritual says, “I
take my rest in the divine domain”.
“I sail upon its stream, and I range [Page
488] within
its garden of peace”. The
speaker sings for joy, it may be, in the Psalms of Taht. He exclaims, “I
utter my praise to the gods who are in the garden of
peace”. The “still waters , are in
Hebrew the “waters of rest”; these,
in the Egyptian, are the waters of Hetep = the
waters of rest or peace. The departed rests beside
these waters in the green fields where Hetep,
as the god of peace, is “putting together
the oblations” for the spirits of the just
made perfect. “Thou preparest a table before
me”, says the Psalmist. The table likewise
was prepared upon Mount Hetep, and piled with
heaps of imperishable food. Hence the Osiris says, “I
rest at the table of my father Osiris” (Rit.,
ch. 70). Mount Hetep was itself the table-land
of the oblations. The “house of the lord” is
designated by the speaker in the Ritual “the
mansion where food is produced for me”, the
mansion that was lifted up by Shu, the paradise
of Am-Khemen. Two paths led up to it, called the “double
path”. These are the “paths of righteousness”.
The
deceased in the Ritual is seen ascending the mount
with the supporting
rod or staff in his hand. Where the Psalmist says, “He restoreth
my soul”, the speaker in the Ritual says
rejoicingly, “My soul is with me”. This
in Egyptian is the ka, that was ultimately attained
in the garden of peace. The ka is the final form
of the soul restored to the departed when they
are perfected in the assembly or congregation
on the mount. The speaker in Hetep says, “There
is given to me the abundance which belongeth to
the ka and to the glorified”. It was in Amenta
that the lord's anointed was begotten: one mode
was by the transformation of Horus the mortal
into Horus the beloved Son. In the Hebrew Psalms
the same transaction is repeated in the place
of the “wicked” who rebel and rage
against the Lord and his anointed. The son begotten
by the father is born to become the ruler over
them, and to effect the triumph of the father
over all his adversaries on the day of judgment,
the same as in the Ritual ( ch. I ). The Lord
himself that sitteth in the heavens “shall
have them in derision”, yea, he has also
set the son as king upon the holy
hill of Zion, the mountain of the
Lord. Here it may be remarked
that the change from Horus the
human youth with the side-Iock
to Horus the divine avenger would
lend itself to the euhemerists
for the conversion of David the
shepherd boy into the solar hero
who made war upon the giant and
slew the Philistines.
The Jews,
we are told,
believe in
a twofold kind
of immortality,
the one being
in a state
immediately
following death,
the other in
the resurrection
from Sheol
at the judgment-day.
These two aspects
of continuity
after death
are to be explained
by the Egyptian eschatology.
The Hebrew
Sheol is the
Egyptian secret
earth of eternity,
the divine
nether-world.
In death the
manes passed
into the Amenta
as a body-soul
that survived
the body and
became a ghost
or shade with
power to reappear
as an apparition
on the earth. After passing
through purgatory
and all the other places
and modes of
purification,
and making
the necessary
transformations
as an Osiris,
or human
Horus, the manes rose from Amenta
to the paradise of spirits
perfected in the likeness of
Horus the divine. The
immortality that was previously
potential for the human
Horus or manes
was established in Tattu and assured
by the resurrection of the glorified
spirit [Page 489] from the
Akar (Rit., 30,
A). The manes in the Ritual says
of himself, “After
being buried on earth I am not
dead in Amenta”. He
is there “reunited to the earth on the western
side of heaven”, to become a “pure spirit
for eternity” (ch. 3, A). This is the original
doctrine of a body, soul, and spirit - a
body on earth, a manes soul in
Sheol, and an immortal spirit in
the resurrection on high.
Horus was
incarnated in the human body on
earth. He died and rose again in
Amenta as a sahu or soul in
a rarer but corporeal form. This
was a resurrection from the first
death. Then he made his transformation
into Horus the pure spirit, and
ascended to his father in heaven,
hawk-headed or dove-headed,
from the mount of Amenta or the
double earth. These things were
visibly portrayed upon the walls
and in the papyri of Egypt, not
to be lost sight of there; but,
away from Egypt, the pictures
were no longer present, and the
Jews lost their living memory of
Amenta. They had only words,
without the means of verification
in the representative signs which
had given a palpable reality to
the most ancient mysteries in the
chambers of Egyptian imagery;
and gradually Sheol dwindled
to the dimensions of the grave,
as we find it continued
in the Old Testament. In
the mythology the messianic resurrection from Sheol was the
annual re-arising of the Horus-sun at Easter. In the eschatology
it was the resurrection of Horus divinized
as son of Ra the holy spirit who ascended
with his followers to the fields of peace
in the upper paradise of the celestial
Aarru.
And just as the colours in Egyptian tombs
remain at times as fresh as if the paint
had never dried, so do the pictures and
portraits survive in the mythology and eschatology,
unfading in colour and imperishable in
form, after they had grown dim and dead for the
Hebrews and Greeks, to be counterfeited
as historic for the Christians, who had no means
of detecting the imposition by any reference
to the prototypes, that are as living
to-day as the hues in which the imagery was painted
by Egyptian scribes, whose drawing was
a means of bringing on and on the most ancient
wisdom down from the days of gesture-language,
when there was as yet no possible registry
in words, to the time of the Egypto-gnostics.
There is plenty of proof that the
same fundamental matter belonging
to the wisdom of Egypt,
in which Osarsiph
of On was an adept, appears thrice
over in the Hebrew writings. It
is mythological
in the books of Genesis, Exodus,
and Joshua. It is eschatological
in the Psalms. And in the
later books it is converted into
matter of prophecy.
All three phases were
Egyptian. With
this difference: the sole possible
fulfilment of prophecy was astronomical,
not humanly historical. To
illustrate two of these phases:
the land of bondage - in the book
of Exodus is the Amenta of the
solar
drama, the lower Egypt of the double
earth, the
scene of the never-ceasing battles
between the powers of light and
darkness, the sun-god and
the Sebau, Ra and the dragon,
or Horus and
Sut; Amenta in the mythology becomes
Sheol in the
Hebrew eschatology. The land of
bondage, then, is the place of
suffering souls that seek deliverance
from the desert of
darkness, the
prison-house of death and hell.
It is the sufferer
in Sheol,
the Osiris of the Ritual, who says, “Thou
wilt not leave my soul in Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer
thy beloved to see [Page 490]
corruption. Thou wilt show me the
path of life” (Ps.
xvi.10, I I). That thy beloved
may be delivered, save with thy
right hand and answer us” (Ps.
Ix. 5). There is the same assimilation
of the manes to the suffering Horus,
or Osiris, as in
the Ritual. There is also the same
mixture of the mythical and eschatological.
This especially
marked in the I8th Psalm, which
purports to contain the words that
were spoken by David on the day
the Lord delivered him from all
his enemies.
According
to the Egyptian wisdom, whoever the speaker
may be in the Hebrew Sheol, it
is the suffering Osiris or the Osiris
in Amenta; and the god appealed
to by him in his trouble is the
god who was Ra the father in heaven as
Atum-Huhi in the Egyptian
and Іhuh in the Jewish cult. Also
it is the solar god alone that will account
for the imagery. Not
only are the ground-plan and total
scheme Egyptian, the mythology and eschatology
can be followed
in innumerable details. It looks
at times as if the scribes were directly
citing the earlier scriptures,
from which the mythos is quoted
and converted into prophecies, chiefly
concerning the coming
judge and avenger, who in the Egyptian
original is the avenger of Osiris-Un-Nefer,
and his followers,
the chosen people, or the glorified
elect, who suffer in Amenta from the
persecution of Sut and
the Sebau, his co-workers in iniquity.
Let the 34th and 35th chapters of Isaiah
be compared
with the Hymn to Osiris. (There are
two versions
of this hymn in the Records of the Past, first
series, vol. iv, and 2nd series, vol. iv.,
that by Mallet
being much the closer rendering.) “Seek
ye out the book of the Lord and
read”, exclaims
Isaiah in his description of the
coming one - The day of vengeance
for long-suffering had obviously
been foretold in this book. And
at the advent of the Lord who
was to bring deliverance to his
people, it is said, “The wilderness
and the solitary place shall be
glad, and the desert shall rejoice
and blossom as the rose”.
“They shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency
of our God”.
“Behold, your God will come with vengeance: he
will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind
shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be
unstopped”. The dumb are to break forth into singing,
and the lame to leap for joy. Waters are to well forth
in the wilderness, streams in the desert, and the mirage
on the sands is to turn them to a pool. All this belongs
to the mythical representation of the advent in the
earth of eternity which was celebrated in the mysteries
as occurring once a year. And it is this coming of
Messiah as Horus the prince of peace on earth and the
avenger who makes Osiris triumphant over his adversaries
in Amenta or Sheol that is described in the Hymn to
Osiris. When he has gone forth in peace by the command
of Seb (that is, as the human Horus born of Seb, god
of earth), the divine company of the gods adore him,
the inhabitants of the Tuat prostrate themselves to
the ground, the loftiest bow the head, the ancestral
spirits are in prayer. When they behold him, the august
dead (in the nether-world) submit to him.The
two lands (of the double earth) unite in one to give
him the glory, marching before his majesty:
glorious, noble (or highest) among
the sahus, from whom proceeds all dignity, who establishes
supreme authority; excellent chief
of the divine
company of the gods [Page 491] with
beautiful aspect, beloved of him who has contemplated
him, extending
his terror through all countries
that may proclaim this name before all others. The
great prince,
eldest of his brothers, the chiefs
of the divine companies, who establishes the truth
in the double
land, who seats the son (himself)
upon the throne of his father, the favourite of his
father Seb,
the beloved of his mother Nut (heaven,
one of whose names is Meri). Very valiant, he overthrows
the impious; strong of arm, he
immolates his adversary
(Sut=Satan); breathing terror
upon his enemies, conquering the distant frontiers
of the wicked.
Firm of heart, his feet are vigilant.
Flesh (or heir) of Seb ! Royalty of the double earth!
(Horus
of the royal countenance). Seb
contemplates his benefits (the benefits of his advent
to the earth); he has ordered him to govern
all countries to assure their prosperity. ...The desert
carries
its tribute to the son of Nut;
Egypt is happy when it sees him appear upon his father's
throne.
The author of evil (Sut) pronounces
magical words and displays his power in his turn, but
the son
of Isis makes his way to him and
avenges his father,
sanctifying and honouring his name. The
paths are cleared, the roads are opened, evil flees
away. He has
caused the authority of his
father to be recognized in the
great dwelling
of Seb - that is, of earth. In this abstract the
advent of Horus, which was annual
in Egypt, whence
he was the king of one year, is hymned in various
phases of his pre-Christian character.
He comes by
order of Seb, the foster-father on earth, as
his favourite of the brothers,
who were five
in number when Horus is counted as one. He comes
in peace, but also brings the sword
as a terror
to the workers of iniquity and as the immolator
of his adversary Sut. He comes
also as Horus
of the inundation; and thus the desert is made to
blossom, and to carry its tribute
to the son
of Nut, who has conquered Sut, the cause of drought
and sterility, in his contest with
the devil in
the wilderness in which Horus
vanquishes
his adversary and avenges his father.
Again,
the following
might have been designated a song of Har-Tema, who
is Horus the fulfiller at his second
advent. “The
spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord
hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the
poor. He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the eyes to them that are blind; to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord's good pleasure
and the day of vengeance of our God” (Is.
Ixi. 1,2). Horus
in his second
advent came hawk-headed in the likeness of Ra as the
anointed and beloved
son.
The divine hawk was his sign that
the spirit
of the Lord was upon him. He brought good tidings
for the poor and comfort for the
oppressed.
He is Horus the compassionate. One of his titles
is “the Comforter”. In one passage
of the Ritual he says, “I have been produced
to repulse the evil powers” - literally those
who grovel on their bellies.“I come as the
forerunner or messenger of the Lord, as councillor
of Osiris”. He goes forth from the state
of the disk to bring light and
liberty to the manes who are darkling
in their prison cells.
He solaces those that mourn, he
wipes away the tears from those
who weep, and opens the eyes
of those who are breathless, bound,
and blind.
At the same time he
was the stern avenger of injustice.
The judgment day and dread assize
were annual, in accordance with
the [Page 492] natural
fact, and there was a time of terrible vengeance
once a year. The “acceptable year of the Lord” was
based upon this judgment and readjustment, the
setting of the captives free and punishing the
guilty once a year; and both the first and second
advents of Horus were of annual occurrence in
the year of “the Lord's good pleasure”.
The
fundamental doctrines and the imagery of the book
of Job are also Egyptian. These include the Amenta
or secret earth of eternity (the hidden place)
(xI. 13), which is the land of darkness and the
shadow of death (x. 21). The sufferer in Amenta,
the redeemer from the dust of earth, the resurrection
of the righteous and annihilation of the wicked
(xix.25-26, xviii. 5). The house of the prince
(Hat-Saru) (xxi. 28). Stretching out the heavens
(ix. 8). The day-spring on high ( xxxviii. 12).
The group of the glorious ones, the sons of God,
including Sut or Satan, the adversary (i. 6).
The Lord as a lion in his terrible majesty (x.
16). The serpent pierced by the hand of God (xxvi.
13). The nest and the phoenix (xxix. 18).
The papyrus plant (viii. II). The
pyramid tombs (iii. 14). Leviathan,
the crocodile-dragon (xli.
I), and the rephaim beneath the
waters. These are one and all Egyptian.
That which is non-human
as matter of the mythos becomes
inhuman when retailed as history,
and it is inhuman in the one
phase because it was not human in the
other. This criterion is infallible. For
example, the persecution of Job by Satan
the adversary repeats the treatment of the good Osiris
by the evil Sut.
This of itself suffices
to show that the drama was non-human in its oldest
form. The Osirian
drama unfolded
in the mysteries of Amenta likewise furnished matter
for the book of
Job. The land
of darkness described as Sheol by Job is one with
Amenta in its secret un-illumined
parts. It is
the land of darkness and the shadow of death,
a land of thick darkness, as darkness itself, a land
of the shadow
of death (Job,
x. 21,22). This is the Ar-en-Tet of the Ritual (ch.
19), the valley of darkness
and death,
whose unmitigable gloom conceals the secrets
that are absolutely unknowable, and where those who
died the second death
were buried
for ever in their mummied immobility. This is the
condition threatened in the book of Job (xlix.
19) for the wicked: “He
shall go to
the generation of his fathers; they shall never
see the light”. This
region of impenetrable
darkness becomes
the whole of
Sheol, or Sualu, in this version of Amenta.
Sheol is especially
described as
the land of shade, which
suggests a
Kamite origin for
the name. As
Egyptian, the root-word “shu” signifies
shade, shadow, to be destitute,
dark, void.
Thence, the void, the hollow, the land of shade, is
the
land of Shual or Sheol as a Semitic
place-name.
The book of Job has been described as the most
profound and wonderful drama of
humanity ever
written, yet those who so described it could not
have told us what it is actually
about. Fundamentally
Egyptian, it has been re-adapted without the wisdom
of Egypt. All has been changed
by making the
sufferer Job a human personage
on this earth;
and when we know the true nature of mythical
characters
like those of Job or Samson, David or Jonah, or
Jack the Giant Killer, it lessens
the interest
we might otherwise take in them as human heroes.
We must resort to the original.
The drama of
Job and Satan contains a euhemerized version of the [Page
493] ancient conflict
betwixt the prince
of darkness, Sut, and Osiris or
Horus, who
suffers from the adversary in Amenta. The
Hebrew Satan was the Egyptian Sut, who became the
evil one of
the later theology as an anthropomorphic rendering
of Apap the serpent of
evil. Sut was
one of the seven sons of the old
First Mother,
the goddess of the Great Bear in the astronomical
mythology. He was not one of “the sons of
god”, as there was no god extant when he
was born. Sut was brought forth twin with Horus,
and first born as the adversary of his brother
Osiris. In a truer version of the mythos the conflict
was in phenomena that were physical, not moral.
There are no morals in mythology, when the characters
are non-human, and when the mythical heroes and
monsters have been represented as human characters
we need to know the mythology once more. The Bible
is full of such characters, and Job is one of
them. In the Ritual Sut is the adversary of Osiris,
or, still earlier, the opponent of Horus. He undoes
what the Good Being does. He is the malicious
destroyer; the author of disease. He is permitted
to persecute Horus or Osiris to the death. In
his character of the adversary, the power of darkness,
he says, “I am Sut, who causeth the storms
and tempests, and who goeth round the horizon
of heaven, like one whose heart is veiled” (Rit.,
ch. 39). Which is equivalent to saying, “I
am black-hearted”. Sut is here the prototype
of Satan, who “goes to and fro in the earth”, and
of whom it is elsewhere said, “Your adversary
the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking
whom he may devour” (I. Peter, v. 8). So
Satan the destroyer plays the devil with the person,
the possessions,
the belongings of Job,
who answers to the suffering Osiris
in this development
of the ancient drama, in which Horus or Job was
no more a human personage than
is Sut or Satan.
They can be studied in the Ritual without disguise
or falsification of character,
and without
a long series of disputations, lamentations, and sermons
taking the place of the primitive
mystery. The “parable” taken
up by Job is the battle of Sut
and Osiris
in the mythical representation. Job the
afflicted one
is the suffering Osiris who passed
into Amenta
as the victim of the power of darkness,
Sut the
tormentor, the tempter, the desolator,
the destroyer.
Amongst other devilries, Sut flung his
ordure at Horus (Rit., ch. 17); he also
pierced him
in the eye; but. where Osiris
suffered dumbly
and opened not his mouth, Job laments
his lot, and
takes to cursing the day of his birth
and wishing that he had been addled
in the egg.
The character of Job is fathomlessly
inferior to
that of the good Osiris, called the
motionless of heart.
The suffering
Horus transforms
in “the west” and
becomes the bennu Osiris or the
phœnix. Job
does the same, or expects to do
so, when he
says, “I
shall die in my nest, and I shall
multiply my
days as the
phoenix”. The
phoenix
was the emblem of the solar god
who died to
resuscitate
in the nest
of Amenta.
He enters the
nest as a hawk
and issues
forth as
a phoenix
(Rit., 13,
1 ). When the
battle with
Sut is over
and Horus rises
again triumphant
over all his
trials that
were inflicted
on him by the
adversary, his property is doubled;
he is crowned with the double
crown as conqueror and king of
the double earth. This is puerilely
represented by the Lord restoring
to Job two-fold of all he had
before and overwhelming him with
material wealth. [Page 494]
The drama in
the mysteries
of Amenta was
a stupendous
representation,
true to nature;
but when the
chief character
has been turned
into a human personage covered
with putrefying
sores, when
the adversary
is made equally
personal, and
the Lord commissions the Devil to try
to torment and
to tempt this poor human sufferer
because he was a perfectly just,
good, and upright man, the drama
becomes a stupendous misrepresentation
not only of divine justice, but
of the original setting forth and
rendering of the mythos. The
name of Job is commonly taken to signify “the
assailed one”, which perfectly describes
the type of the suffering Osiris. He is the assailed
one, and Sut is the assailant. How the good Osiris
was assailed by the evil Sut and his sami, the
Apap-dragon and the sebau, may be seen through
all the mysteries of Amenta or of Sheol.
Sut the
prototypal adversary is the evil one personified
in Amenta as opponent of the deliverer Horus;
he is the keeper of the prison-house for death,
to which Horus comes as lord of life and liberty.
The speaker in the Ritual cries to Ra, “O
deliver me from the god who seizes souls. The
darkness in which Sekari dwells is terrifying
to the weak”. This god is Sut (the Hebrew
Satan), and darkness is the breath
of his domain. In this darkness
the Osiris suffers, supplicating
Ra for light. Job sitting in the
ashes, covered with boils from
head to foot, and scraping himself
with a potsherd, is a gross physical
rendering of the manes in Amenta,
who is scraped to get
rid of the impurities and uncleannesses
with which the soul from this world
finds itself afflicted
in the other life. The querulous,
complaining Job is but a poor portrait
of the speaker in the
Ritual, and the Egyptian wisdom
has to be restored before the genesis
of the drama can be understood.
Osiris was the great god in matter
as source or well-spring of
life. He
rested as the perfect one in Amenta, without sign
of breath or
beat of heart, but as the fount
of motion and the fulfiller of
existence in
the nether earth, where he suffered
in his death
and burial, though not directly. Deity could not
die
nor suffer in itself and this part
of the character
was represented by the human Horus. He was the
sufferer in various natural phenomena; and being
portrayed in human guise as the
mortal, this
led the way to the later euhemerizing
of the mythical
representations and the reproducing of the drama
as human history. It was the human
Horus who was
pierced and tortured by Sut
in death when
it was his time to triumph and he became
the king and
conqueror in his turn. The suffering Horus only
conquered Sut when he transformed
and became
the god in his turn and made his
resurrection
from Amenta. Job is this fearfully afflicted
Horus or Osiris,
suffering every evil that could be
let loose on him by his adversary.
But the scene
is in Sheol, not on earth. Job is the “servant”, like
the suffering Messiah described by Isaiah, and
like the human Horus, who was maimed and deformed,
dumb and blind, as An-ar-ef in the land of darkness.
When Job “takes up his parable” he
is the sufferer in Amenta, the
Hebrew Sheol. He goes
blackened where
there is no sun. He is a brother to the jackals
in the paths of darkness,
and a companion to ostriches which
furnish the
feathers of Mati in the Egyptian
judgment hall.
He is cast into the mire of the pit. He exclaims, “Why
do ye persecute me as a god, and
are not satisfied with my flesh ? And after my
skin hath been thus
destroyed, out of [Page 495] my flesh shall
I see God” (Job, xix. 22,
26). A skin for the body is an expression peculiarly
Egyptian.
The
god who is called the divine soul
in the Ritual (ch. 165, A) is addressed as the “concealer
of skins” - that is, a hider of the body
of those who rise again transformed
in the divine likeness of a soul
eternalized. In the judgment
scenes a second skin = a second
body is the sign of re-embodiment
after death, as a sahu or divine
mummy. That is the shape in which
Amsu-Horus rises from the tomb
as vindicator and avenger of Osiris
and the buried dead, the naked
who become the clothed in the
hew body. In the case of Job, it
seems that the Lord has taken the
skin or body of flesh, but is not
satisfied. Job is a manes
in Sheol. Nevertheless his resurrection
from the pit is assured. Hence
his exclamation, “I
know that my vindicator liveth,
and that he shall stand up at the
last upon the earth. And
after my skin hath been thus destroyed. yet from
(or without)
my flesh shall I see God” - for
himself, and not vicariously by
means of another (Job, xix. 25-27).
There is an imposing picture
in the book of Job (ch. xxvi) which
is purely Egyptian. “The dead tremble beneath
the waters, and the inhabitants thereof
in the presence of the deity. Sheol
is naked before him, and Abaddon
hath no covering. He stretcheth
out the north over empty space
and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
He bindeth up the waters in his
thick clouds, and the cloud is
not rent under them. He closeth
in the face of his throne and spreadeth
his cloud upon it. He hath described
a boundary upon the
face of the waters unto the confines
of light and darkness. The pillars
of heaven tremble and
are astonished at his rebuke. He
stilleth the sea by his power,
and by his understanding he
smiteth Rahab. By his spirit the
heavens are established. His hand
hath pierced the fleeing serpent”.
The
stretcher of heaven for covering was Atum-Ιu (or Ra)
when he attained
the solar sovereignty.
He is addressed in this character
by the manes,
who is in dread of the deluge: “O thou great
coverer of heaven, in thy name of stretcher (of
the sky) grant that I may have power over the
water and not be drowned” (Rit., 57). The
heaven thus stretched over-head was represented
as water, hence the greatness of the power that
held it aloft in safety. The deceased beneath
the waters are the manes in Amenta, where the
waters are an image of the lower Nun, the sky
as water below the horizon. Abaddon or destruction
lurked below in the shape of the Apap-reptile,
the destroyer, the great serpent in the waters
of darkness, who was pierced and smitten through
and through when he rose up in rebellion against
Ra or Horus or Atum-Ιu= lahu. Atum-Ιu the Lord,
whom we shall identify with Іhuh, was the architect
who finished the building of the heavens; and
in the book of Job it is Іhuh the Lord who claims
to have laid the foundations of the earth and
says, “Declare, if thou hast understanding,
who determined the measures thereof, or who stretched
the line upon it. Whereupon were the foundations
thereof fastened, or who laid the corner-stone
thereof when the morning stars sang and all the
sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job, xxxviii.
4,7.) To “stretch
the line” is an expression
peculiarly Egyptian, used frequently
as synonymous with laying the foundations of the
temple. The
last chapters of the book contain
the chief zootypes belonging to [Page
496] the Egyptian astronomy. “The
Bear with her sons” (ch. 38, 32) is a picture
of the ancient mother in the celestial
heptanomis with her seven sons.
The first and foremost of
these was Behemoth the hippopotamus
of Sut (and his mother), who is
described here as “the
chief of the ways of god”. His fellow was
the crocodile of Sebek-Horus, which
is here called Leviathan. The foundations
of the heavens were
certainly laid in or by the bear
and her seven sons, the first two
of which were the twins Sut
and Horus, the hippopotamus and
the crocodile; and it is equally
certain that these foundations
were laid in the Egyptian astronomy.
This will show that the writer
is employing the Egyptian
wisdom, and therefore it may be
that he refers to the course of
precession, albeit vaguely, in
the following allusion: “Hast thou commanded
the morning since thy days began,
and caused the dayspring to know
its place, that it might take
hold of the ends of the earth?” which looks
like the equinox upon its travels,
although treated as the “morning” and
the visiting “dayspring” from
on high that makes its all-embracing
circuit in the great year of the
world.
When Job “took up his
parable” he
found it in the Book of the Dead, and is himself
the speaker as the manes in Amenta, where we obtain
foothold once more in the phenomena of nature,
which were represented sanely and scientifically
by the Egyptian sages, who laid the ground so
that the eschatological rendering could follow
the earlier mythos. Names have been omitted, the
prototypal figures effaced, wisdom turned into
ignorance, and the remains of Egyptian mythology
and eschatology have been foisted on the world
as an original revelation given in the Hebrew
tongue; whereas the fundamental subject-matter
of the sacred writings and the very God himself
who is supposed to have revealed the truth in
them are non-original as biblical, and only recognizable
as Egyptian. The prayer of Jonah in the belly
of the fish shows him to be another form of the
Afflicted One who is for three days and three
nights in the lowermost depths at the time of
the winter solstice. In this legend the belly
of the fish is identical with the belly of Sheol,
the womb of the under-world. In the ancient fragment
quoted in the second chapter Jonah says, “I
called out of mine affliction unto
the Lord, and he answered me; out of the belly
of Sheol cried
I; thou heardest my voice. For
thou didst cast me into the depth, in the
heart of the seas, and the
flood was round about me; all
thy waves and thy billows
passed over me. And I said,
I am cast out from before thine
eyes; yet I will look
again towards thy holy temple
(i.e., on the mount). The waters
compassed me about, even
to the soul. The deep was
round about me;
the weeds were wrapped about
my head. I
went down to the bottoms of
the mountains;
earth with her bars (closed)
upon me for ever;
yet thou hast brought up my
life from the pit, O Lord my
God”. There
is nothing
whatever about the fish in
this fragment.
On the contrary the speaker
is in the belly
of Sheol, which is the Kamite
Amenta.
In this nether-world he is
at the roots of the
mount of earth which stands
in the waters
of the abyss. The womb of
Sheol might be represented
as it was by the water-cow
or a great fish. A great fish
in the form of a crocodile
was one of the types of the
ancient mother who brought
forth Sebek-Horus from the
Nun
as her young crocodile, just
as she [Page 497] brought forth Sut as
her young hippopotamus.
The sufferer in Sheol is the
same here as
in the Psalms and the book
of Job, and both are identical
with the suffering Osiris
in the
mysteries of Amenta. We have
now to take
a backward look in the course
of establishing
the links between the Egyptian
wisdom and
the Hebrew writings.
Religion
in Egypt
first began in worship or
propitiation of the primal
providence that was figured
as the Great
Mother who brought forth the
seven elemental
powers called her children.
These powers in Egypt were
the seven Ali. In
Phoenicia they are the seven Elohim, in
Assyria they are seven forms of the Ili, and in
Israel the seven Elohim, Kabirim, or Baalim. Sut
was one of these, and Sut upon his mountain at
the pole became EI-Shadai in his Hebrew form of
Seth. The company of seven (with the great mother)
passed into the astronomical mythology as the
seven great spirits which were divinized as star
gods with Anup, a form of Sut, at the pole. Under
the figure of Israel, the abandoned female, later
writers in the Old Testament denounce the pre-monogamous
great mother as the harlot of promiscuous sexual
intercourse. Jeremiah rejoices furiously because “she
that hath borne seven languisheth”, ashamed
and confounded, and hath given up the ghost” (ch.
xv. 9). When the one god had been “lifted
up” as Ra in the solar mythos and Huhi the
eternal in the eschatology by both the Egyptians
and the Jews, or by the Egyptian Jews, the previous
divinities called the ancestors of Ra were superseded,
or their powers were absorbed in or blended with
the one great power, who was now the all-one as
Neb-er-ter.
“When the children of Israel
did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” (Іhuh),
and served the Baalim and Ashtoreth
(Judges ii. II, 14), they were
returning to the worship of
the most ancient great mother and
her sons the Ali, the companions,
the brothers in the first
circle of the gods; the Baalim
being one with the Elohim and
the Kabirim. “Return
(says Іhuh), O backsliding children (the two sisters Judah
and Israel), for I am a
husband to you ” (Jer. iii. 14). This backsliding,
however, was itself a return to Israel's earlier
love - “Israel”, that is, as a part of
the “common, dim populations” of Syria,
Phoenicia or Canaan, and Palestine. The change
from Baal to Іhuh is indicated by Hosea (ch. ii.
16, also by Jeremiah iii.) when it is said to
Israel, “And it shall be at that day, saith
the Lord, thou shalt call me 'my husband', and thou
shalt call me no longer Baal. For I will take
away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth,
and they shall no more be memorialized by name”. The
Baalim, like the Elohim and Âbirim, were
the Ali, companion gods or powers, that were originally
a group of seven, to whom El or Baal was
added as the eighth or highest God. They existed
in the time of the totemic matriarchate before
the husband or the father could be known personally,
whether as human or divine. In this passage the
deity becomes monogamous, and Israel, as a feminine
equivalent for the suppressed goddess, is to be
his wife. The language of the “prophets” concerning
the whoredom of Israel cannot be
comprehended apart from the status
of the woman in communal
connubium. The whore of later language
is the representative of the totemic
woman, who might
cohabit with seven or any other
appointed number of consorts. The
harlot in mythology
was the great mother, [Page 498] whose
own children were her consorts
in the beginning.
When the fatherhood was divinized the god became
the husband, the one instead of
the seven or
eight, who were the Ali, Illi,
Elohim, Âberim,
or Baalim. Israel had consorted
with the Baalim,
and therefore
cohabited promiscuously.
And after the
one god was
made known
to her as a
father and
a husband,
she still went
a-whoring after
the earlier
gods. Hence
the denunciations
of Israel as
the whore who would not truly
play the part
of wife.
Hebraists
have surmised,
and some Hebrews
(known to the
writer) have
admitted, that
the prefix
B in B' Jah
(B' Jah is
Jehovah, Is.
xxvi. 4,. and
B' Jah is his
name) is an
abbreviation
for the name
of Baal. If
written out
fully this
would read,
Baal - Iah
= Baal is Jah.
Bealiah is
a proper name
in the book
of Chronicles
I. xii. 5,
in which we
see that Baal-Iah
as divinity
supplied a
personal name.
Thus the Baal
who is Іah – 
would be the Іah who
was one of
the Baalim;
and the earliest
Baalim were
a form of the
seven companions,
like the Kabarim
and Elohim,
which are followed
in the book of Genesis
by the god
named Iahu-Elohim.
The one god
in Israel is
made known
to Moses by the two names
of —  and
 Іhuh
and Іah. Now a priest of On (Osarsiph) would
naturally learn at On of the one god
Atum-Ra, who was Huhi the eternal
in the character of God the father and
Ιu in the character of God the
son, which two were one. In accordance with Egyptian
thought,
that which was for ever was the
only true reality. This was represented by Huhi
the eternal. And
Huhi is the god made known to Israel
by the priest of On. Gesenius derives the name
of Іhuh from
a root huh, which root does not
exist in Hebrew. But it does exist in Egyptian.
Huh or heh signifies
ever, everlastingness, eternity,
the eternal. Huhi was a title that was applied
to Ptah, Atum-Ra,
and Osiris, as Neb-Huhi the ever-lasting
lord, or as the supreme one, self-existing, and
eternal
god,. which each of these three
deities represented in turn as one divine dynasty
succeeded another
in the Egyptian religion. An eternity
of existence was imaged by the Egyptians as ever-coming
or
becoming; hence ever-coming or
ever-becoming was a mode of imaging the eternal
being. Thus
the one god as their Huhi was not
only he who is for ever as the father, but also
he who comes
for ever as the son. This visible
mode of continuity by means of coming naturally
involved becoming,
according to the Egyptian doctrine
of kheper, which includes ever-evolving, ever-transforming,
ever-perpetuating, ever-becoming,
under the one
word kheper. Thus
the name of an
eternal, self-existent being which is  in
Hebrew can be traced as Huhi,
the name for the one eternal, ever-Iiving,
ever-lasting
god as Egyptian. And now for the
first time
we can distinguish the one name, 
from the other  ,
if only on Egyptian ground. “ Ιu”, with
variants in Au, Iau, Aui, and others,
is also an Egyptian word, but with
no linguistic relationship
to the word Huh. Ιu is likewise
the name of an Egyptian god, as
Ιu-em-hetep, he who comes with
peace, who was primarily the son
of Ptah, and who was repeated in
the cult of Atum-Ra as Nefer-Atum.
In fact, Atum-Ra is both Huhi and
Ιu as the one god living in truth,
the father manifesting as
the ever- coming son, who was Ιu-sa
the son of Ιusaas in the cult of
On. All that was ever represented
to the Jewish mind by the name
of Іhuh [Page 499] (Іhvh
or Jehovah) had been expressed to the Egyptian
by the word huhi or, later, hehi.
As Egyptian, “huh” signified
everlastingness, millions of times,
eternity, and “Huhi” was also a name
of their god the eternal. It
had been a title, we repeat, of Ptah, of Atum,
and of Osiris, each in turn, in
three different cults at Memphis, On, and Abydos.
Huhi, then,
was the eternal as the father;
he who always had been, ever was, ever should
be, and hence the
everlasting god.
Ιu was the ever-coming
son, Іu-sa or Іu-em-hetep, the son who comes with
peace as
periodic manifestor for the eternal
father. Thus the One God of the Jews was Egyptian
in this twofold
character, both by nature and by
name.
The change in Israel from the worship of
El-Shaddai to the
worship of Іhuh, from the Eloistic
to the Jehovistic god, corresponds to the change
from the stellar
to the solar worship in the astronomical
mythology. El in the highest was the star-god
on the summit
of the mountain, who in the Kamite
mythos might be Sut, Seth, or Anup at the pole.
The pole was
represented by the mount, one Egyptian
name of which is Sut, denoting standing-ground. The
ruler of the pole-star was the lord of standing-ground
or station at the fixed centre
of the heavens.
The highest El was the eighth
of the Ali
or Baalim. In Hebrew he is called El-Shaddai,
commonly rendered
the powerful or mighty one. Another rendering,
however, of the name is more than
probable. This
was the most high god, El-Elyon,
whom the Phoenicians
also called Israel. As Egyptian, it was Anup on
the mount, or at the pole, the highest of the
star-gods or Elohim who preceded the solar sovereignty
of Ra. El-Shaddai, who was Phoenician, and had
been co-worker with the Elohim in the legends
of creation, was succeeded and superseded by the
god of two names who is made known to Israel as “Іhuh” and
lahu, or “lao” = Egyptian Іu. The
Egyptian word Ιu is also written Ì, with u inherent,
and has the meaning of coming, come, to come,
and is the name of the ever- coming and eternal
child, Іu-em-hetep, or Іusa, the coming son. In
the Phoenician version the deity lao= Іu is
the coming son, the well-beloved, the only-begotten
son of El, who was to be called leoud (or  ),
the supposed prototype of “something
to come” in Christianity (see Bryant). The
word Іu with these meanings in
Egyptian agrees with lah or lahu
in Hebrew, signifying come and
to come. Thus
Huhi is equivalent
to  , and Іu is
equivalent to  as
Ihu or lao, the two forms of which name
are different from each other at the root, but
could be applied as two titles
of the one
god. lah is portrayed as the god who is operative,
audible, and visible in material
phenomena.
His are the mighty deeds. He is
the manifestor
for the father, the opener of Amenta
in the solar
mythos. The Song of Moses shows that lah was the
divine deliverer who triumphed
gloriously
over the adversaries of the father,
as did this
deliverer in the exodus from the lower Egypt
of Amenta (Ex.
xv. 2). lah is the opponent of Amalek, with whom
he makes war for ever, as did Horus
with Apap,
the eternal enemy (Ex. xvii.16).
lah is the
god who rides as conqueror through
the deserts,
(Ps. lxviii. 4) and goes forth before his people
marching
through the wilderness. It was
he who led
his people “like a flock, by the hand of
Moses and Aaron” (Ps. lxxvii. 20). lah is
called upon as deliverer [Page 500] from
death and as the saviour from the sufferings
of Sheol (Ps. cxvi.). He
is the coming one who is looked to and watched
and waited for as the redeemer
of Israel.
It is to Iah the Hallelu-Iah of the Psalmist is
raised.
In short, the character is that
of God the
son, and therefore lah is one with fu the son of
Atum-Huhi. Iah is god the son, and the son
in Egyptian
is the Messu. Thus, Iah the Messu is the Mes-Iah,
hence the Messiah in Hebrew. The
Messiah as
Iah the Messu was the ever-coming
son, like Ιu,
and Ιu as Egyptian is he who comes
as manifestor
for the eternal father.
The duality of Ptah, also
of Atum as Huhi the eternal father,
and Ιu the
ever-coming son, is repeated and
preserved in
the “Pistis Sophia” of the Egypto-gnostics.
Ptah is not mentioned by name.
But the great forefather is called the father
of all fatherhood, the god
who was “parentless”; and Ptah is
the one god, who, being gotten
by his own becoming, was the self-existent and
eternal one, Huhi (Eg.),
Іhuh (Hebrew), Іao (Phoenician), or leou (Egypto-gnostic).
The one god in two persons, or,
as the Ritual' expresses it, with
two faces, becomes twain in
the father and son. These are called
Ieou the greater and Іao the
lesser. Ieou
the elder is “the overseer of the light”;
Іao the younger is the good Sabaoth,
who emanates from Ieou as a son from the father (B.
ii. 193).
Іao is also designated Sabaoth-Adamas,
who is the gnostic and Jewish deity Іao-Sabaoth thus
identified with Atum-Ra, lord of
the heavenly
host. The same duality of father
and son was figured in the twofold Athamas at Samothrace. “The
two great books of Ieou” are mentioned in
Pistis Sophia, “which are said to have been
written down by Enoch when Jesus” spoke
with him from the tree of knowledge
and the tree of life, which were the two trees
in the paradise
of Adam” (B. ii. 246). The paradise of Adam
was the garden of Atum, and the
Jesus who spoke and uttered the
sayings was the wise youth Ιu,
or Ιu-em-hetep, the son of Atum,
or Atum in his earlier character
of Ιu as the son of Ptah.
Moreover,
it is not improbable that a version
of these is extant in two books
of the apocrypha, viz, the
Wisdom of Jesus and the Wisdom
of Solomon. The
expounder of the mysteries in these writings was
the Egyptian Jesus,
who is the Sayer, word
or logos, twice over as Egyptian,
once as Ιu
the son of Ptah, at Memphis, and once as the son
of Atum-Ra, Ιu-em-hetep, the prince
of peace, and
prototype of the Hebrew Solomon,
at On. The
Egyptian Jesus was equally the Egyptian
Solomon, the
youthful sage, as sayer and teacher of the oral
wisdom. When Iamblichus describes the one
god who was
worshipped at Heliopolis or Annu
as “Ichton
and Emphe”, he refers to Atum in his two
characters of father and son or
Ra and Horus. .Atum was represented
at Annu by the fish of the
inundation, and also by Ιu-em-hetep,
the bringer of peace and plenty,
as Ichton the fish that typified
the saviour to Egypt. And now if
for the modern Jews we read the
ancient worshippers of Atum-Ιu
or, still earlier, of Ptah, we
shall be able to follow Isaiah
in his survey of the great dispersion
of the Jewish people over all the
earth. “The
Lord shall set his hand to recover the remnants
of his people which shall remain from Assyria, and
from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Kush, [Page
501] and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from
Hamath,
and from
the islands (or coast-lands) of the sea. He shall assemble
the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed
of Judah from the four corners of the earth”. (
Is. xi. I I, 13. ) It is noticeable that the prophet
calls the Lord who is to gather the Jews together from
all lands by the double name of lah-Jehovah. Іah is
the Egyptian Ιu, whose followers were the primeval
Jews of Egypt north and south (Pathros), of Ethiopia
and Chaldea, of the islands of the sea, and the remotest
shores of the earth, including the Jews of Cornwall.
These are the prehistoric Jews who are to be known
by the name of the god they worshipped. This range
will include the black Jews of Africa and India, and
all the rest of those whose god we identify with Іu
the Egyptian original and prototype of all; Іu as
god the son, whether of the father as Atum or as Ptah. No
such world-wide dispersion of the Jewish race
from Palestine
or Judea had ever occurred in the
time of Isaiah. It is the religious
community,
not the race, that will account for the Jews who
emigrated to the ends of the earth,
and for the
names of the Jewish god, who was the Egyptian
Іu, Phoenician lao, Hebrew lah,
Assyrian lau,
Egypto-gnostic leou (greater and lesser), Chinese
laou, Polynesian Іho-Іho, Dyak
laouh, Nicobar
Islands Eewu, Mexican Ao, Toda Au, Hungarian lao,
Manx lee, Cornish lau, Welsh lau
(greater and
lesser), Hebrew lao-Sabaoth, Chaldean lao-Heptaktis,
Greek la, and IE, Latin Jupiter
and Jove.
To
follow the Jews as the Aiu of
Egypt in their
world-wide dispersion, we shall have to think
in continents
rather than in Petticoat Lanes and Ghettos.
The
worshippers of lao in Phoenicia, of lau in
Assyria, of lao in Syria, lau and
Hu in Britain, la or Іu in Greece,
Jupiter in Italy,Іho-Іho
in Polynesia, lau in America were
each and all of them Jews in a
sense, but the sense was religious,
not originally ethnical; and religion
does not determine race any more
than language does in
later ages of the world. There was a religion of the god Іu or lao in Egypt
thirteen thousand years ago. That god was Atum-Ιu,
born son of Ptah. He was the earliest father in
heaven because he was the divine Ra in his primordial
sovereignty. He is the god in two persons who
was first figured as the sun upon the double horizon
=the father in the west, the son in the east.
This god went forth from Kam by several names
and various routes. Those who worshipped him as
Atum became the Adamites, the Edomites, the red
men; those who worshipped him as lao, lah, or
Іu became the Jews in many lands and these are
the Jews of that world-wide dispersion recognized
by Isaiah, which did not follow any known historical
exodus from Egypt or captivity in Babylon, or
migration from Palestine. The Jews were only ethnical
at root when the root was the vine in Egypt, or
in Ethiopia beyond, and the Jews were one of its
branches. They were only ethnical at root when
the race was black, whether these were the black
Jews in Africa or in India.
From
the beginning the Jews were as they are to-day,
a religious community. It is the
worship of Іu in Egypt thirteen thousand years
ago and the going
out from thence that will account
for the supreme being amongst the Dyaks of Borneo
being known
to them as Yavuah, which name was
not derived from the Hebrew Jehovah, but [Page
502] from the original
of both (A. M. Cameron, Proc. Soc.
of Bib. Arch.). The Dyaks also preserve the tradition
of a great
ancestor who was determined to
construct a ladder that should reach up to heaven,
but one night
a worm ate into the foot of the
ladder, and it fell like the tower of Babel. The
Dyaks also have
the legend of a great deluge which
drowned the chief part of mankind and divided the
rest. These
two catastrophes mark the endings
of two vast periods in time which preceded the
supremacy of
Atum-Іu in the Zodiac of twelve
signs. Thus
amongst a people so isolated as the Dyaks they
have
the god Yavuah
and the tradition of the two catastrophes which
are represented
in the book
of Genesis by the destruction of
the tower and
the deluge of Noah. Naturally the “wisdom” was
carried into the island of Borneo
with the cult of the god laouah, whose worshippers
are elsewhere
called the Ιus or Jews from the
Egyptian deity who was Іu or Aiu by name both in
the cult of
Ptah at Memphis and of Atum-Ra
at On. The same god is found in the Babylonian
mythology with
the name la, or lau= lah in Hebrew
(Pinches, T. G., Proc. Soc. of Bib. Arch.). But
it is not necessary
to suppose the Assyrian god lau
was derived from the Hebrew deity lahu, or vice
versa, when there
is a common origin for both in
the Egyptian god lu. This is not a matter merely
of philology,
but of the characters in the mythology.
lau is “the
sage of the gods” (Assyn. Fragments). He
is also described as the divine
artisan or art-workman, especially
in the character of the potter.
This is Ptah all over. He
was pre-eminently the potter, and the head of
the Khnemmu or divine moulders.
Further and
finally, it was Ptah-Ιu who, with his Ali, the
Elohim,
created the Aarru-garden as a paradise
of pleasure
in the earth of eternity. And in the Assyrian
eschatology it is lau, “the sage of the
gods”, who transports the justified spirits
after death to the “place of delights”, where
they are fed on butter and honey
and drink the water that gives
eternal life (Records, vol. xi.
161-2). Our British Druids worshipped
a deity of the same name and dual
nature as the Egyptian
I u, the Assyrian lau, the Hebrew
lahu. This divine duality, consisting
of the father and the son,
was called by them lau the elder
and lau the younger, corresponding
to the gnostic leou and lao.
The
god Іu, as son of Ptah, was an
astronomical builder and architect
of the heavens. Іu the son of Atum
was also reputed to be a great
builder. As the Kamite Solomon
he was not only the prince of peace
and the divine healer; he was also
said to have designed the Temple.
The stages of building on
earth were reflected in the heavens.
The mound-builders were first.
They raised the seven mounds of the
heptanomis. Shu
raised the four pillars
of the four quarters. Ptah was the architect who
based his building
on the pole and the four cardinal
points = the
four-square tent and tent-staff Atum, his son,
was the builder of heaven as the
house, the
Father's house on high” of which the Christian
sings. This in the Ritual is called “the
dwelling of my father Tum” (ch. 17). It
is also said to the deceased, “Tum hath
built thy house” (ch. 17, 30). “The
double lion-god hath founded thy
habitation”. Lastly,
the temple was designed by Іu-em-hetep
the son of Atum, as the builder
in the astronomical mythology.
Thence the people named after the
deity Іu as the Aiu, [Page 503] or later
Jews, would come to be recognized in Egypt, the land of
temples, as the great builders.
And according to Rabbinical traditions
the Jews= Ιus or Aaiu were the
great typical builders. They are
said to have excavated the mountains,
raised the pyramids, built temples
and cities, and surrounded them
with walls; divided the Nile
into several canals, and constructed
dykes against the inundation (Josephus
and Philo ). One of these great works was the canal of
Joseph,
i.e. the divine architect who as son of Ptah was
his sif, Іu-sif= Joseph. Also, if we have to do
with Egyptians who are only identified by a religious
name, that of the deity Іu, there is no difficulty
about their having built the Meskenoth of Tum,
or, as it is rendered, the store-cities of Pithom
and Rameses, when the great temple of Atum-Ιu
was originally erected at Annu or On, which according
to the divine dynasties followed Memphis in attaining
its supremacy. The Jew-name was Egyptian then
as Ιu, or Aiu, with other variants. Aiu is a form
of the word, and Neb-Aiu, the Lord Aiu, filled
the office of high priest in the temple of Osiris
at Abydos. The Aiu as manes in Amenta are the
children of Ra, who was Atum-Huhi as Ra the father
and Atum-Ιu as Horus the son. The land of Judea
or Judah was named in Egyptian. It appears upon
the monuments as Іuta or Ιutah. Іu is dual, ta
is earth or land, and Іuta is the double land
or double earth of the Egyptian mythos localized
in Judea. The
dual kingdom of Judea was derived by name from
the dual deity Іu, whose followers
in Egypt were
the Ιus, lews, or Jews, and
given to Joseph
in the persons of his two sons, Ephraim
and Manasseh. “Joseph
shall have two portions” says Ezekiel (xlvii.
13); and these had already been
assigned to the two sons of Joseph
by Jacob in the book of Genesis.
In the mythos the two portions
of the double earth were united
once a year to form the kingdom of
the sif or son, who is Joseph in
the Hebrew version and Іu the sif
as son of Atum-Ra. The two halves
were united by the son in his name
of Har-sam-taui, unifier of the
double land.
It has been shown
that the Hebrew deity Іhuh was
god the father in one character
and in the other god the son.
If the type of these was the bull,
this would represent the father,
and the bullock or calf
the son, as with the bull of Osiris
and the calf of Horus. If the lion
were the type, the old lion
would represent the father, the
young lion the son. The same with
the ass, which was another
type of the deity Іu, the father
and the son being represented by
the ass and its foal. The
symbolism of the lion, the bull, and the ass has
its tale
to tell concerning Israel and the
Kamite origins. The lion was a
zootype of Atum-Ιu. He is called the lion-faced
in the Ritual. His mother was a
lioness. He is addressed as a lion-god
(Rit., ch. 28), the god
in lion form (chs. 38, 41, 53,
54, 62). It is the same with Іhuh
in Israel. The god is described
by Hezekiah (Is. xxxviii. 13),
as a lion: “As
a lion, so he breaketh all my bones”. This
is looked upon merely as a tropical
figure of speech, but it is a figure
of fact in the original
symbolism. Atum-Ιu was the lion
of Judah in the Egyptian mythos.
The lion origin of Judah's totem
was known to Nahum in his inquiry
for the lion-spirit of the past: “Where
is the den of the lions and the
feeding place of the young lions,
where the old lion and the lioness
walked with the lion's whelp and
no one made them afraid ? The [Page 504] lion
tore in pieces enough for his whelps,
and strangled for his lioness
and filled his caves with prey”. (Nahum,
ii. I I, 12, 13.) These
are equivalent
to the lion as Ptah, the lioness as Sekhet Merptah,
and Atum as
the whelp.
Іah roareth as the typical lion: “Thou shalt
walk after the Lord, who shall roar like a lion,
for he shall roar , (Hos. xi. 10). “The
Lord shall roar from on high, he shall mightily
roar” (Jer. xxv. 30). “The Lord shall
roar from Zion” (Joel, iii. 16). “The
lion hath roared: the Lord God hath spoken” (
Amos, iii. 8). Job was hunted by the Lord in the
shape of a lion. “Thou huntest me as a lion, ,says
the fearfully-afflicted one (Job, x. 16). The
Lord was known in Israel by his roaring like a
lion, because he had been known in Egypt as the
lion-god who was Atum-Ra, the lion of the double
force which was represented by the twin lions
(Rit.. 162, I). The solar Dionysius was known
by the name of “the roarer”, and he
was also portrayed as a lion-headed
god. In
the Bakchai of Euripides ( 1078) he is invoked
by the chorus to manifest in his
might and appear
as a flaming lion. The reason
of this roaring
in that shape is that the Lord
was imaged
as a lion on the mount of the lions, which was
the
Mount Shennu = Sinai, the lion-mount
where the Lord
was the solar lion - where, in fact, he was
the two lions, the old lion and
the young one.
These are referred to by Hosea. “I will
be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion
to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and
go away; I will carry off, and there shall be
none to deliver”. (Hosea, v. 14.) The solar
birthplace in the mythos was upon the mount of
the two lions. Horus the son was reborn upon the
horizon as “the young lion made resplendent
at his birth by the two lions” (Rit., ch.
3). Also it is said that “Judah is a lion's
whelp; he stooped down, he couched as a lion and
as a lioness”. In this description we have
the typical lion in the triple
form of a lion, the lioness, and
the whelp, as the type was portrayed
in Egypt. There
was a triple-headed
lion-god at Meroe with four arms, which may well
stand
for the dual-natured
Atum-Ιu as the son of the lion-headed Ptah and
Sekhet (Rawlinson on Herodotus,
ii. 35). According
to the language of the
Ritual, this
would be the “lion
of the double lions”, or double force. It
is proclaimed by Ezekiel that the mother of Israel
was a lioness. As “a lioness she couched
among lions and she brought up one of her whelps;
he became a young lion; the nations also heard
of him: he was taken in their pit, and they brought
him with hooks into the land of Egypt” (Ez.
xix. I, 5). This is another and a truer version
of the mythos euhemerized in Exodus as the story
of Joseph and his brethren. The lion was taken
in the same pit into which Joseph was cast in
the “historic” account, and this identifies
the Egypt signified as lower Egypt
in Amenta. Joseph is the Ιu-sif
in Egyptian - that is, Ιu the
son, who is here represented as
the young lion whose mother was
a lioness.
The origin of the
mother as a lioness was the same
as with the sow or the cow. It
was totemic and
typical. The lioness was a zootype of the mythical
Great Mother, Kefa
(or Kheft),
who became the Hebrew Chavvah, the genetrix of
life and mother of the human race.
Sekhet, the
Great Mother in her solar form, was also a lioness,
and in certain Egyptian texts the
goddess Sekhet
has been represented as an
ancestress
of the human race (Lefébure, Tombeau de
Seti, i. I I. PI.4,5.) – [Page
505] She also was the mother in Amenta
who reproduced the
Aiu
or Jews, as the
children of Ra, for another life. “I know”, says
the manes, “ that I have been conceived by
Sekhet and born of Neith”) (Rit.,
ch. 66). This likewise was the
divine or mythical ancestry of
the Jews – but only the Egyptian wisdom
ever could explain the derivation
of the race of either Jew or Gentile,
from the lioness. Sekhet
was the consort of Ptah, one of
whose types is the lion. These
two, Ptah and Sekhet, were the
parents of Atum, the lion-god in
the cult of Atum-Ra; and Atum
was the first man and reputed father
of the human race, with Ιu, the
sif, or son, who is the young lion
as Joseph. Thus, and in no other
way, was man or mankind mothered
by Sekhet the lioness, by Kefa,
by Chavvah, or by Eve. And
in that way only was a lioness the mother of
Israel, whose whelp is the young
lion as the
lion of Judah. The Lord who was a lion as the
representative
of solar force becomes the “lion-like” of
later language. Thus the Egyptian origins of the
Jews, their gods, their mythology, and their symbolism
were veiled from view, and philology was left
without the necessary determinative types and
palpable figures of the underlying facts.
The
Egyptian deity Ιu, the son of Atum-Ra, was also
portrayed as a short-homed bull-calf. Not as the
god in person, but as a figure to be interpreted
by a necessary knowledge of the symbolism. Osiris
was designated the “bull of eternity”. Atum
was the earlier bull-father. His consort was
Ιusaas, a form of the cow-headed goddess, their
divine child being I u, the su or sif, in the
image of a bull-calf; and as here shown Ιu is
= Jah in Hebrew, as god the son, who is identifiable
with Joseph. The difficult passage in Genesis
(xlix. 22) might be more correctly rendered, “Joseph
is son of the heifer”. This he would be as
Ιu (em-hetep), the sif (son) of
the cow-headed Isuaas, who was
a form of Hathor, the golden heifer,
in the temple of Atum- Ra at On. The
god who brought up Israel out of Egypt is not
only represented by the golden
calf; he is
also said to have the horns of the ox or wild
bull
(Numbers xxiii. 22). Ιu was the
bull in one
character and the calf in the other; and as it
was with
Іu in Egypt so is it with Іahu
in Israel,
only we must learn to read the imagery aright
in accordance
with the Egyptian wisdom, which
we are told
was so familiar to “Moses”. As Kuenen states
it, “Іhuh was worshipped in the shape of
a young bull. It cannot be doubted that the cult
of the bull-calf was really the cult of Іhuh in
person”. This statement, however, is not
in keeping with the present mode
of presenting the facts. The existence
of types does not of
necessity involve a worship of
the type. The whole range of sign-language
lies between such an assumption
and the possible truth. Otherwise
stated, the young bullock was one
of the types under which
the god Ιu was represented by the
Egyptians and the Israelites. The
bullock, for example,
was identified with Joseph and venerated as the
zootype of his divinity
by
certain of the ancient Jews (Kircher,
Volume 1, page
197), Joseph being, as herein maintained, a
form of Ιu the son (sif), with
Jacob as a
figure of the father-god. The calves of Beth-Aon
also
point to Ιu, the calf-headed god,
and the beth
or temple of Atum-Ra in Annu, the Hebrew On (Hosea,
x. 5). It is said by Hosea, “Ephraim is
an heifer that is taught, that
loveth to tread out [Page 506] the
corn; but I have passed over
upon her fair neck” (Ib.
x. I I). Ιusaas, the mother
of u, was the heifer on whose neck, or between
the horns
of whose head, the sun-god rode.
Her son was Joseph as the Іu-sif;
and in this passage we have a casting
back aimed at the origins
after the attempted casting out
of the cult. The sons of Joseph
are identified with the calves
of Beth-On, and Ephraim with the
heifer. Covenants also were established
in Israel by cutting a calf
in twain and passing the contracting
persons between the two parts (Jer.
xxxiv. 18, 19), which made
the type equivalent to the two
sexes of the mother and child or
heifer and calf, or the calf
that was both male and female;
also to the duality of father
and son.
The
Vignettes to the Ritual prove that
Atum-Ra
the solar god and his son Іu were
also represented by the ass. The sun
or sun-god
goes down to Amenta as, if not
riding on, the ass. He is attacked there
by the Apap-serpent
who devours in the dark (Vignette,
Rit., ch.40). At dawn he rises
and is hauled
up by the ass, or by the young
solar god with ass's ears. Thus we have the
old ass and
the young, the Hebrew ass and
the foal of
an ass, on which the sun-god in
the later legend rode when he came up
from Amenta
riding on the ass in the mythology
which preceded the eschatology. The ass and
the young sun-god
also were both named Іu, and Ιu
was
the son of Atum-Ra, the ass being
his zootype. Іu, as Egyptian, is represented
by Іao in Phoenician and in Hebrew. Clement
Alexander,
who was an Egyptian, spells the name
of Jehovah as lau. Thus, “Іu” is
the ass in
Egyptian, lao is a name of the god with
an ass's head, and lau is Jehovah,
the god of
the Jews and the Christians also Epiphanius
asserts that the deity Sabaoth
had the face
of an ass. He calls it “the
gnostic Sabaoth”. But Sabaoth was also
the Jew-god,
or god Іu,
who was known by the name of
lao-Sabaoth. The
ass-god is portrayed on some of the talismanic
stones
that were copied
by King in his work The Gnostics and
their Remains. In
one of these
lao is ass-headed in the character of
Horus grasping
the two scorpions as he stands
upon the cippus
(PI. G.,2). But King, who calls this “the
ass-headed typhon, or the principle of evil”, is
hopelessly wrong. According to the Egypto-gnostic “Pistis
Sophia”, lao-Sabaoth is god the son to leou
(Іhuh) as god the father, both
of whom were forms of the ass-headed
deity. And lao, or Abrakas,
is likewise portrayed upon the
gnostic gems in the shape of a
double-headed ass, which is equivalent
to the father-god and son in the
same image as leou and lao, Іhuh
and lah, or Huhi and Іu with
their duality blended in one figure
(King, G. R., PI. B.). It represented
Horus, or Іu in the
cult of Atum-Ιu. King knew only
of one ass, which to him was a
type of the evil Sut or Typhon.
But
this was not the ass of Ιu, Іao-Sabaoth
or Atum-Ra.
In the Museum of the
Collegio Romano to-day there
may be seen a figure of the ass-headed
god who was Egyptian, Jewish, and
Gnostic. It is the image
of a man extended cross-wise on
the Roman cross. The figure
is being saluted
by a worshipper of the god, who was thus portrayed
with the head of an
ass. It was discovered some years
since scratched
roughly on the wall of a room in
a house that
was buried in ancient times beneath the buildings
of the Palatine Hill, and was cut
out from the
wall and deposited in the Roman [Page 507] Museum.
King, in describing it, tries hard but
vainly to make out that the animal is not an ass, but
was intended for Anubis, the jackal
He says: “In
reality the production of some
devout but
illiterate
gnostic, it
is construed
into a shocking
heathen blasphemy
and a gibe
upon the good
Christian Alexamenos,
because they
mistake the
jackal's head
for that of
an ass, and
consequently
imagine an intentional
caricature
of their own
crucifix”. There
is no mistaking the ass for Anubis.
There was no caricature in the
crucifix. The
ass is a type
of the solar
sufferer in
Amenta, who
came to be
called the
crucified.
The Roman or
Latin cross
is a figure
of the longest
night and shortest
day when the
sun was in
the winter
solstice. The
ass-headed god upon the cross is the exact equivalent
of Osiris-tat, and in this crude
representation
we find the divine victim
on or as the
cross instead of the tat, or instead of being
devoured by
the “eater
of the ass”, as in the Vignettes to the Ritual.
The adoration of Alexamenos was directed to the
god who is portrayed upon the cross, not of the
equinox, but of the winter solstice, as the sufferer
in Amenta, and as the form of the solar deity
who made himself a sacrifice like Ptah, or Osiris
in the cross-tree of the tat. (King, The Gnostics
and their Remains, 2nd ed., pp. 229-30).
It was
charged against the Christians in Rome that they
also were worshippers of the ass-god. Tertullian
in a passage of his reply says to his opponents, “Like
many others, you have dreamed that an ass's head
is our god, but a new version of our god has lately
been made public at Rome, ever since a certain
hireling convict of a bull-fighter put forth a
picture with some such inscription as this, 'The god of the
Christians ΟΝΟΚΟΙΗΤΗΣ.
He was portrayed with the ears of an ass, and
with one of his feet hoofed, holding in his hand
a book, and clothed with a toga” (Apol.
16). Diodorus
says, according to the fragment of Lib. 34 preserved
by Photius, that when Antiochus Epiphanes,
after conquering the Jews, went
into the inner sanctuary of God, he found there
a stone statue
of a man with a long beard, holding
a book in his hand and sitting on an ass. This
he took to
be an image of Moses. We should
rather take it to have been the image of the ass-headed
god Atum-Ιu,
w ho passed out of Egypt as Іao,
Іau, or Іao-Sabaoth, the solar god who as lord
of hosts in Egypt, before
going forth, had attained the status
of Huhi the eternal, the one god in spirit and
in truth; Ra
in the mythology, the holy ghost
in the eschatology; Atum-Huhi as the father, Ιu
as the son, and Ra as the holy spirit. But the
ass was not the
god, whether of the Egyptians or
the Jews, the Gnostics or Christians. It was but
a type of the
power that was recognized at first
as solar, the power that was divinized in Atum,
who was Ra in
his primordial sovereignty, and
whose son was the ass-headed Іao, Іau, or Ιu.
But
we must make
a further digression on account
of Joseph as a form of the young solar god in Israel
who was Ιu, the ass-headed sif or son of
Atum-Ra, in Egypt. Not one of the legends in the
Hebrew writings
attributed to Moses could be understood
apart from the mythology from which they were
fundamentally derived. Nor
does the mythology
remain intact in the form of the märchen.
The story of Joseph, for example, is a collection
of fugitive
fragments,
each one of which is separately identifiable.
Joseph is not simply one of [Page
508] ten or twelve
or seventy brethren in the family of Jacob or
Israel. Joseph-El as the beloved
son of Jacob
was divine, and would be a divinity if there were
any possibility of all the other
sons being
human. It is now known that Jacob-El
and Joseph-Ei
were worshipped as two divinities in
Northern Syria,
and it is there we find a remnant of the seed
of Israel or Isiri-El, and therefore
of Jacob-El
whose son was Joseph. But it is not to be supposed
that Jacob was a human father,
and that Joseph
was his human son, who were
divinized by
adding the divine El as a suffix to their
names. This
leaves us with nothing but the two divinities
to go upon. These probably originated
with Іu in
Kheb, or Lower Egypt, as Jacob, and Іu, the
sif, or son, as Joseph; the two
divinities
being humanized in the later legends of the Іu,
Aiu,
or Jews, as was the common way
in converting mythos into history. It
can be shown that Joseph was a form of the divine,
the beloved son, whose father was  one
version of the mythos and Jacob in another. Io or Jo= Іu in the name of
Joseph
( )is taken
by Hebraists as the equivalent
of lahu; and in Ps. lxxxi. 5, the name of Joseph is
written lahusiph
( )-that is,
lah the siph or
sif, which in Egyptian denotes the son. Also the names
that is Joseph-lah and of Josephiah (Ez. viii. 10) proclaim
the fact, in accordance with the
use and wont of the Hebrew language, that Joseph
is lah = I
u in Egyptian. In the same way
the name of El-Іasaph (Num. i. 14 and iii. 24)
identifies the deity
of Joseph, and affirms that Іasaph
is one with lah, and therefore is Joseph-El. Joseph
as son
is Іu the sif, or the coming son,
in Egyptian. These names show the identity of
Joseph and I
u the sif, and denote that Joseph
was the son of the same father, who is Jacob in
the one version
and Іhuh in the other. The
descent of the sun-god
into the lower Egypt of Amenta is portrayed in
the märchen as
the casting of Joseph into the
pit, and the
ascent therefrom in his glory by the coat of many
colours.
In Egypt Joseph plays the part
of Repa to
the Ra or Pharaoh. In this character he rides in
the
second chariot when he goes forth
as the Adon,
or Aten, over all the land. But as Joseph-El he
is the divine Repa, the Horus
of thirty years - that is, I u the sif in the cult
of Atum-Ra. At
thirty years of age the son as
Horus, or Іu the sif = Joseph,
took his seat upon the throne beside
the father, and went forth as ruler
over all the land of Egypt,
the halves of which were united
when the young god assumed the
sovereignty of the double country
in the mythos, and is called Har-sam-taui,
uniter of the double earth, or
earth and heaven, in the
eschatology. His relationship to
Neith likewise attests his divinity.
When the throne-name of “Zaphenath
Paneah” = Sif-Neith the living, is conferred
upon him he is identified as the
son who became the consort of the
cow-headed Neith, a form of
whom was the goddess Ιusaas, the
mother of I u the sif = Joseph,
at Heliopolis. This
relationship to the great
Neith is fulfilled when he becomes the consort
of Asenath or Asa-Neith,
whose name identifies her as the
great goddess
Neith, the daughter of Ra, or, as “historically” rendered,
the daughter of Potiphar.
As mythical
characters, Joseph and Jesus are two forms of one
original.
Joseph in Israel was a name of
the Messiah who was [Page 509] expected
as the ever-coming son. Now,
in Egyptian there are two names
for the coming son: one is Іu the su = Jesus – the
other is Ιu the sif = Joseph. And when
the wandering Jew, named Kartaphiles,
became a Christian he
is called Joseph, and was said
to have fallen into a trance once
every century, and to have
risen again at thirty years of
age. That is the age of Horus the
adult in his second advent;
also of Jesus in the Gospels, as
well as of Joseph when he became
the Adon over all the land of Egypt,
the double land or double earth
of Egypt in Amenta.
Joseph being
identified as a god in Joseph-El,
the god Joseph is further identifiable
as an Egyptian deity who was Іu,
the ever-coming son, both in
the dynasty of Ptah at Memphis
and also of Atum-Ra at On. It may be seen from Josephus against Apion (B. i.,
ch. 32) that the Hebrew hero Joseph was the Jewish
form of Іu, the sif or son. Іu the typical son
was the su or sif of Atum, also of Ptah. In either
case he is the resuscitated form of the father
who becomes his own son, Іu the sif, as he who
is the bringer of peace. The name of I u the coming
son would be written in Egyptian either as Ιusa,
Ιusu, or Ιusif. The one form passes into the name
of lesous, the other into the name of Joseph,
chief among the twelve sons assigned to Jacob
or Israel. The form Іusa may be found in the name
of Іusaas, the mother who was great with the Egyptian
Jesus or Ιusa in the cult of Atum-Ra at On. The
divine nature of Joseph-El may explicate a passage
from Cheremon, cited by Josephus, who records
a tradition that one of the two leaders of the
Israelites, in an exodus from Egypt which can
no longer be considered historical, was Joseph.
Cheremon was one of the most learned men in Egypt,
and the contemporary of Apion, against whom Josephus
wrote his reply. He
was keeper of the rolls and books. He was an Egyptian
historian in the library of the Serapaeum. He
also composed
a hieroglyphical dictionary, fragments
of which are still extant and have
been of service to Egyptologists.
Cheremon, therefore, was one of
those who knew. He not only asserts
that one of the two leaders
was Joseph, but also that his Egyptian
name was Peteseph, and that he
was a sacred scribe. Now,
as may be seen, the name of Ptah
was rendered by Pet in the Greek
name of Petesuchis for the
Ptah (Putah) of crocodiles; and
Joseph = Peteseph in Egyptian is
the sif or son In, i.e. Ιusif,
whilst Peteseph is the son of Ptah,
which he was as Іu the sif of Ptah
in the Egyptian divine dynasties-that
is, Іu-em-hetep. Peteseph as I
u the son of Ptah (or Ptah the
son) was the divine scribe in person
who is portrayed in that character
with the papyrus-roll upon his
knee and the cap of wisdom on his head.
The fact of Joseph being the son
of Ptah, or Ptah in the character
of the divine son, was certainly
not derived from the biblical history
of the Jews, but it was derived
by Josephus from an unimpeachable
Egyptian authority, viz., that
of Cheremon. Thus, Іu the sif of
Ptah, with Moses, is equivalent
to the youthful solar god with
Shu-Anhur in the exodus from the
lower Egypt of Amenta. Of course,
Joseph and Moses could not be contemporaries
as historical characters according
to the book of
Exodus, but they could as mythical
divinities. And when
Moses and Joseph
are restored to their proper position as deities
there need be no difficulty
about dates. As gods they could
be contemporaries
I [Page 510] (see “The Exodus”, in
Book x.). Joseph is the typical
dreamer and diviner in his youth.
And if Іu the sif of Atum-Ra be
not an interpreter of dreams, he
was the revealer of the future
by means of dreams. One of the
Ptolemaic tablets records the
fulfilment of the promise that
was made in a dream by this god
to Pasherenptah concerning the
birth of a son (Renouf,
Hib. Lect., page 141 ). This would
be ground enough for the “inspired” writer
to go upon in establishing the
character assigned to Joseph as
the dreamer and interpreter of
dreams. The dream of the sun, moon,
and eleven stars making obeisance
to Joseph shows the astronomical
relationship of the twelve to
the signs of the zodiac.
Doubtless
there was “corn
in Egypt”, which
was at all times par excellence the land of corn, but the typical
corn-land of the religious mysteries
is in Amenta, where the corn germinates
periodically from the buried body
of Osiris. We need go no
farther than the Papyrus of Ani
to see from whence the legend of
the seven kine was derived. In
the Hebrew märchen it is related that Pharaoh -
which Pharaoh is never specified, and this is
as it would or should be if Ra, the solar god,
is meant - dreamed that seven kine came up out of
the river that were fat and well-favoured, and
seven other kine that were lean and ill-favoured.
When interpreted by Joseph, the seven fat kine
are said to signify seven years of plenty and
the seven lean kine seven years of famine. The
dream was fulfilled in proof that Joseph was an
historical personage, and that all the rest of
the mythos reduced to märchen was matter
of fact. Now, in the Ritual these are the seven
cows which are the givers of abundance in the
Egypt of the lower earth, through which the river
runs as the celestial Nile. This then is the river
out of which the seven cows arose, and the country
is in the other world, the lower Egypt of the
double earth, from which the original exodus was
made in the going forth of the manes from Amenta.
The land of Egypt, the river and the seven cows,
all go together in the mythical representation
from which the “history” has been
manufactured. The seven cows are
associated with the bull in the
Aarru-paradise of plenty. The
bull was the young
solar god as Horus, or the bullock-headed deity
Іu, who passed out of
Egypt
as Joseph, the bull of Israel.
If there ever
had been a failure of the Nile for seven years
together,
the biblical account is none the
less a pious
fraud (see the fraudulent “Tablet of the
Seven Years of Famine”, Proc. Soc. of Bib.
Arch.). For the fact is there was
no real famine in the land of
Egypt - “And
the seven years of famine began
to come, according as Joseph had
said: and there was famine in all
lands: but in all the land of
Egypt there was bread. And
the famine was over all the face
of the earth. And all countries
came into Egypt to Joseph to
buy corn, because the famine was
sore in all the earth”. (Gen. xli, 54-57.)
But not in Egypt. That is, not
in the Egypt of eternal
harvest, where the corn grew seven
cubits high with ears
some eighty-four inches long. There
is no historical sense in which
such a statement could be truly
interpreted. The mythos only can
render it intelligibly. As may
be seen in the Vignettes to the
Ritual, the seven cows, called
the providers of plenty, are
depicted in the Aarru-paradise.
This is in the lower Egypt of
Amenta, and it is a land abounding
with corn, the [Page 511] only harvest-field
in all the
earth of eternity. There
was nought but arid desert and the wilderness
of sand in the domain of Sut. The Aarru in Khebt was
the harvest-field
of Horus= Joseph,
of the twelve who are his reapers. and the people
who are his followers,
amongst whom
we shall at last discover the Jews as the Aaiu in
Egypt.
Joseph in Egypt
has been assigned
the place of Horus in the Egypt of Amenta. “Joseph was thirty
years old when he stood before Pharaoh,
King of Egypt”, and went forth as the Repa
to buy up the corn against the coming
famine. This is the age of Horus when
he rises in Amenta as Amsu the husbandman, the master
of food, or lord of the harvest, to become
the ruler for Ra, the divine Pharaoh,
with the flail or khu sign in his hand.
Pharaoh makes Joseph ruler over all the land
of Egypt, second only to himself; that
is, according to Egyptian usage, Joseph becomes the
Repa to the Ra.
In the Stele of Excommunication “Tum
the creator god” is said to be “the
duplicate of Aten”. This tells us two
things. First
that the duality
of the god, which is expressed by the
names of Huhi and
Ιu, was also
expressed by
the names of Atum and Aten. Atum was
god the father, and Aten
the Nefer-Atum,
the Repa, or
royal son. Thus
Ιu the sif is Aten = Adon by name, and Aten
is the Adon
to Atum-Ra, the divine Pharaoh. Now
we are told that it is, or was,
a practice
of the Jews to use the word Adon instead of the word
Іhuh in calling on the sacred name.
And Adon, we
repeat, is the Hebrew equivalent
of the Egyptian
Aten as a title of Ιu, the son
of Atum-Ra,
or of Atum who was the duplicate of Aten” in
the person of the father. The Aten in Egyptian
is the lord, one with the Hebrew Adon, and when
Joseph rode in “the second chariot” as
lord over all the land of Egypt, and second only
to the Ra, the Adon represented Aten the son to
Ra, the father who was Atum-Ra or Atum-Huhi the
eternal. Atum was adored at On or Annu as the
living god who in Egyptian was p-ankhu, the living
god. Now when the Egyptian titles are conferred
on Joseph, and Pharaoh is said to have called
him by the name of Zaphenath-Paneah, whatsoever
Egyptian word may be represented by Zaphenath,
it is generally agreed by Egyptologists that Paneah
or Paneach is a rendering of p-ankhu, the living
god, which was the especial title of Atum-Ιu in
the temple of On. Joseph was thirty years of age
when he “went out over the land of Egypt. Horus
was thirty years of age when he went forth over
all the land of Egypt. Thirty years was the
age of full adultship. It is the
typical age of the Sheru, the Prince, the Messiah
in the Egyptian,
Persian, and Christian mythology.
Joseph was the Adon of the Pharaoh, the Aten of
Atum-Ra, and
therefore he was thirty years of
age when he went forth as ruler over all the land
of Egypt. Joseph
as the Aten was the lord over Egypt,
with Atum-Ra as over-lord. The divine Ra and Horus
were impersonated
in the human Pharaoh and Repa:
these were previously extant as Atum and Aten,
Tum and Nefer-Tum, who
were the divine Ra and Ιusif in
the pre-Osirian religion of the Egyptian Ιus who
became the unclean,
the accursed, the lepers, the outcasts
of Egypt in later monumental times. Seek for the
Jews in
Egypt as the Ιu, or Aaiu, and they
will be found there in the same character that
they assign to
themselves as a people suffering
terribly from leprosy and other diseases said to
have been the
result of [Page 512] uncleanness
in their religious rites, which are so fervidly
denounced
in the
Old Testament. The
conclusion that Joseph was the young solar divinity,
fu the Son of Atum-Ra at On, may
be clinched
by the story related of Potiphar's
wife, which
is the same that is told in various
other legends
of this same mythical personage. The märchen
that do exist in Egyptian, as shown by the “Tale
of the Two Brothers”, prove themselves to
be the deposit of indefinitely earlier myth, the
tale in this instance being a literary version
of the Sut-Horus legend, and of the two brothers,
the twins of light and darkness, which is found
world-wide as myth or märchen. The tale contains
its own evidence of ancientness in the fact that
the sun-god invoked is not Ra, but the Horus of
both horizons, Har-Makhu, who preceded the earliest
form of Ra. The seven Hathors, who are otherwise
the seven cows of plenty, are also present with
Bata, the bull of the divine company.
The history
of Joseph can be partly traced
to the Egyptian story of “The Two Brothers”, written
by the scribe Anna in the time
of Seti II., nineteenth dynasty, on a papyrus now
in the British Museum
(Records of the Past, vol. ii.
p. 139). In this story we find a form of the Sut-Horus
myth reduced
to the status of the popular märchen. Sut
appears in his later character of Sut-Anup or Anup
(to drop the
name of Sut). Anup is the elder brother of Bata, who
is Horus as
the younger
brother. Like Horus, he is the bull of the
divine company
of the gods who went down into Egypt or the dark
land of Ethiopia. The double Sut
and Horus imaged
back to back is repeated when Anup is described
as sitting on the back of Bata “Anup his
elder brother sat upon his back
at dawn of day”, that
is, in the twilight which was represented
when Sothis rose heliacally, or, as it is imaged,
sat
upon the back of Horus the young
solar god. The dual nature of Child-Horus is repeated
in Bata
when he says to his consort, “I am a woman
even as thou art”, and declares that his
male soul or his heart is in the
flower of the acacia tree. This
soul of Bata in the flower of
the tree of life can be paralleled
in the Ritual, where Horus is the
golden Anbu, the flower of
the hidden dwelling (ch. 71). Anup
is the guide of
Bata in the märchen, as
of Horus in the myth. Anup is the
attendant on Bata in the mountain and his mourner
in death,
as he is of Horus in the Ritual.
Anup is the master of the fields of food, and he
ordains that those
who are in charge of the food shall
be with the Osiris (ch. 144). Bata follows the
beautiful cattle,
who tell him where the greenest
grasses and the richest herbage grow. These are
the seven cows
who are the providers of plenty,
to whom Bata, like Osiris or Horus, is the fecundating
bull.
The seven cows likewise appear
in the same story as the seven Hathors. Bata the
strong one can
be identified with Horus in the
character of Amsu the husbandman, who is portrayed
as the preparer
of the soil and sower of seed.
Bata does the ploughing and other labours in the
fields of Aarru, and
his equal was not to be found in
all the land. Thus the myth of Sut-Horus the twin
brothers can be traced in the ancient folk-lore
of Egypt,
and this can be followed into the “historic” or
euhemeristic phase in the book
of Genesis, where it reappears
as the story of Joseph [Page
513] the beautiful youth and Potiphar's
wife. Bata
was the bull of the divine company that went
down into the
Egypt of Amenta Joseph is the bull
or chief one of the children of
Israel who
went down into Egypt. Bata is the divine husbandman
and lord of the harvest. Joseph
is the one
to whose sheaf the other sheaves
bowed down
in recognition of his supremacy as lord of the
harvest (Gen.
xxxvii. 5-8). The seven cows or Hathors are the
foretellers of fate consequent
on their being
the bringers of good fortune. Also the bull of
the cows is the diviner of fate.
Bata the bull
divines and foretells the events that will occur
to him. This is the character ascribed
to Joseph as
the diviner in the biblical version. If the
parallel had been perfected, Potiphar,
whose name
denotes the servant of Ra in Egyptian, should
have taken the rôle of Anup, who is the
servant of Ra. In the Hebrew version
we read that “Joseph
was comely and well-favoured. And
it came to pass after these things
that his master's wife cast
eyes upon Joseph, and she said,
Lie with me. But he refused, and
said unto his master's wife, Behold,
my master knoweth not what is with
me in the house, and he hath put
all that he hath into my hand:
there is none greater in this house
than I; neither hath he kept anything
from me but thee. How
then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against
God ? And it
came to pass, as she spake
to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened
not unto her,
to lie by her, or to be with her. And it
came to pass about this time that
he went into
the house to do his work, and there was none of
the men of the house there within.
And she caught
him by his garment, saying, Lie with me; and he
left his garment in her hand, and
fled, and got
him out” (Gen. xxxix. 9-12). In the Egyptian
folk-tale Bata goes into the house
of Anup to fetch seed, and the wife of Anup cast her
eyes
upon him. “And she spoke to him, saying, “What
strength there is in thee; indeed,
I observe thy vigour every day. Her heart knew
him. ...She seized
upon him, and said to him, Come,
let us lie down for a little. Better for thee.
...beautiful clothes.
Then the youth became like a panther
with fury on account of the shameful discourse
which she
had addressed to him. And she was
alarmed exceedingly. He spoke to her, saying,
Verily, I have looked
upon thee in the light of a mother,
and thy husband in that of a father to me. (For
he is older than
I, as much as if he had begotten
me.) What a great abomination is this which thou
hast mentioned
to me. Do not repeat it again to
me, and I will not speak of it to anyone. Verily
, I will not
let anything of it come forth from
my mouth to any man” (Records, vol. ii.
pp. 140, 141). Joseph being identified as the
same character with Bata, it is
Bata who will explain that character. Bata
signifies the soul of
the earth. In the Egyptian mythos this was the sun. “I
am Bata”, says
the manes in the character of the
solar god who
is renewed and reborn daily as the soul of the
earth and multiplier of the years
(Rit., ch.
87). He might be reborn under the serpent type,
or
as the soul of Atum from the lotus,
or the soul
of Bata from the flower of the tree of dawn. But
the myth is not merely solar. In
fact, there
is no bottom to the solar myth
except in the
lunar. Anup and Bata must be identified
with Sut and
Horus as the brothers in the two halves of the
lunation before the tale can be
correlated
and correctly read.[Page 514] Sut-Anup
was the elder brother of the two. His consort
was Nephthys,
the lady of darkness, who is
charged with
soliciting the young lord of light. There
was some scandal
respecting her and Osiris. The typical wanton
who seduces or tries to seduce
the youthful
hero is the lady of the moon, who overcomes or
who
assails the lord of light. The
character is
determined in relation to Anup = Sut, the elder
of the twin
brothers in the mythos which passed
into the eschatology
and finally survived in the märchen of the
two brothers. The story was represented
three times over: (I) as mythical,
(2) as eschatological, and (3) as a folk-tale,
before
it was narrated
of Joseph in Egypt as Hebrew history
or biblical biography. The
origin of the mythos rests with the darkly beautiful
Nephthys, consort of Sut (or Anup),
the power of darkness in the nether-earth. That she
had
a character somewhat aphrodisiacal
assigned to her, which became the subject of the legend,
may
be gathered from her being a divinity
of the Egyptian town Tsebets, called Aphroditopolis
by the Greeks.
But she has been degraded as a
wicked wanton in later representations of the dark
lady who was
originally the lady of darkness,
at first in complexion, afterwards in character. The
Semites began it
with their scandal - mongering concerning
Ishtar (or Shetar, the bride in Egyptian), because
she
had been the pre-monogamous great
mother whose child and spouse were one. The Greeks
followed
them either directly or indirectly.
Plutarch repeats a tale in which it is charged against
Nephthys
that either she seduced Osiris
or he succumbed
to her wiles. It
is represented in the romance that after Nephthys
had become the wife of Anup she
fell in love
illicitly with Horus, and besought him to stay with
her
when he came to plough and sow
the seed-fields
of Amenta. It is as the sower of seed that Bata
goes to the house where Anup's
wife is sitting
at her toilet. He says, “Arise and give
me seed, that I may go back to
the field”. Nephthys
is literally the house of seed
personified. She carries both the house and the seed-bowl
on her
head, and her name of Nebthi signifies
the seed-house or granary of the earth. The story of
Joseph and
Potiphar's wife contains a mutilated
fragment of this ancient Egyptian märchen reduced
from the mythos into a romance.
In this Potiphar is Anup, the wife
is Nephthys, and Joseph is Bata
or Horus, who is called the bull.
Bata was the bull, and Joseph is
also the bull, in Israel;
hence the totem of the tribe of
Ephraim was the bull. Bata is the
bull of the seven cows which
come to him as the seven Hathors,
and, to make use of the Egyptian
figure, Joseph likewise is
the bull of the seven cows that
were seen in Pharaoh's dream. He
was also the bull as the adult
of thirty
years. In
the Egyptian story
Bata becomes a bull. “And
Bata said to his elder brother,
Behold, I am
about to become a bull with all the sacred marks,
but
with an unknown history. The bull
arrived, and
his majesty the Pharaoh inspected him and rejoiced
exceedingly, and celebrated a festival
above all description;
a mighty marvel and
rejoicings
for it were made throughout all the
land. To the
bull there were given many attendants and many
offerings,
and the king loved him exceedingly
above all men
in the whole land. And when the days were multiplied
after this his majesty was wearing
the collar
of lapis lazuli with a wreath
of all kinds
of flowers on his neck. He was [Page
515] in his brazen
chariot, and he went forth from the royal palace.
Bata was brought before the king,
and rejoicings
were made throughout the whole
land. They
sat down to make a holiday (and they
gave him his
name); and his majesty at once loved him exceedingly,
and raised him to the dignity of
Prince of Aethiopia.
But when the days had
multiplied
after this, his majesty made him hereditary prince
of the whole land. And
the sun-god Horus of both horizons said to Khnum,
0, make a wife for Bata, that he
may not remain
alone. And Khnum made him a companion, who as
she sat was more beautiful in her
limbs than
any woman in the whole earth; the whole godhead was
in her”. And now a tale is told of this consort
of Bata which tends to identify
her with Neitochris, that is primarily with the
goddess Neith, and
thence with Asenath the wife of
Joseph. These quotations from the Egyptian tale
contain the
gist of the following statement. “And Pharaoh
said unto Joseph. ...Thou shalt
be over my house, and according
to thy word shall all my people
be ruled; only in the throne will
I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh
said unto Joseph, See,
I have set thee over all the land
of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off
his signet-ring from his hand
and put it upon Joseph's hand,
and arrayed him in vestures of
fine linen and put a gold chain
about his neck; and he made him
to ride in the second chariot which
he had: and they cried before
him Abrech: and he set him over
all the land of Egypt. And
Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without
thee shall
no man lift up his hand or
his foot in all the land of Egypt.
And Pharaoh
called Joseph's name Zaphenath-Paneah ( ),
and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter
of Potiphera. And Joseph went out over the land
of Egypt. And Joseph was thirty
years old when
he stood before Pharaoh the King of Egypt” (Gen.
xli. 40, 46). The passage in which Joseph makes
himself known to his brethren should be compared
with the scene in which the lost Rata reveals
himself and says, “Look upon me; I am indeed
alive. Look upon me, for I am really alive. I
am a bull! “and Bata ”reigned for
thirty years as king over Egypt”.
“And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph;
doth my father yet live ? And he said, I am Joseph
your brother, whom ye sold into the land of Egypt” (Gen.
xlv. 3, 4). Joseph also had become a bull or typical
adult like Horus the man or god of thirty years. The
fact is admitted
when it is said that “Joseph
was thirty years old when he stood
before Pharaoh, King of Egypt”. In the solar
symbolism the sun as a calf in the winter solstice
became a
bull in the vernal equinox, where
he found his heart, his soul, his force, sometimes
imaged as
phallic, upon the summit of the
tree of dawn. In the human sphere the boy became
a bull when
he was Khemt as a man of thirty
years. In Amenta, Amsu is the bull of his mother, “Ka-Mutf”, as
the anointed Horus, thirty years
of age. Joseph, raised to the Repa-ship, also became
a bull - that
is, a typical adult of thirty years.
Asenath we take to be a form of the great Neith,
who was
represented at On (Annu) by Іusâas
the mother of the young bull Aiu (or Ιu= Io), who
as her
sif or son was Іusa. Professor
Sayce in his “History
of Joseph” says, with an unabashed effronteth, “What
is important” (in this episode) “is
that the incident which played
so large a part in Joseph's [Page
516] life should have been
preserved in Egyptian tradition
! It became part of the literary
inheritance of the Egyptians
! ” (p.
36). Thus suggesting that the Egyptians
derived their mythology and folk-tales
from the Hebrew
Pentateuch.
But to
resume: the
dramatis personae in the
Hebrew books of wisdom are chiefly
the father and the son. The father is Іhuh, the
self- existent
and eternal god, and Іu (or Іusa)
is the messianic son as manifestor in the cycles
of all time. I
t is the father that is speaking
of one of these periods, possibly a sothiac cycle,
who says to
Esdras, “The time shall come”.
“My son Jesus shall be revealed with those that
be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice within
400 years”. This was long thought to have been
a prophecy of a Christ that was to come as an historical
personage. But this son of god, whether named I u,
lao, Ιusa, Jesus, or Joseph, could no more become historical
than god the father, both being one. And if this divine
son could ever have become historical, he would have
been Jesus the son of Atum-Ra at On, or, still earlier,
Jesus the son of Ptah at Memphis. The “Wisdom
of Jesus ., in the Apocrypha is, according to the Prologue,
the wisdom of two different Jesuses, the one being
grandfather of the other. This
can be explained by the Kamite mythology and
the two representatives of that name in the two divine
dynasties of
Ptah and Atum-Ra.
As Wilkinson remarked, “The
Egyptians acknowledged two of this name
( Jesus ), the first the grandfather of the
other, according to the Greeks, and the
reputed inventor of medicine, who received peculiar
honours on a certain mountain on the
Libyan side of the Nile, near the City of Crocodiles,
where he was reported to have been buried” (The Ancient
Egyptians,
vol. iii. page 205). There are not
only two with the name of Jesus who
represent the sayer for the father god;
Solomon is likewise a form of the wise
youth who uttered the wisdom in the
sayings or logia kuriaka. We are told in the prologue
that “this Jesus did imitate
Solomon”. But
Іu-em-hetep,
the Egyptian
Jesus, as the prince of peace, was Solomon
by name. Thus the Jesus
and Solomon
of the Apocrypha,
to whom the Wisdom of Jesus and the Wisdom
of Solomon
are ascribed,
were two forms
of the Word or Sayer, who was Іu the
son (su) of Ptah,
and Іu-em-hetep,
the prince
of peace, otherwise known to the Hebrews
by name as Jesus and
Solomon.
The
most ancient
wisdom was
oral. It was conveyed by word of mouth, from mouth
to ear, as
in the mysteries. This
consisted of the magical
sayings or the great words of power. Following
the oral wisdom, the
earliest known records of written
wisdom were
collections of the sayings, which were continually
enlarged, as by the Egyptian Jesus,
or “the
two of this name”. The Osirian Book of the
Dead is largely a collection of
sayings which were given by Ra
the father in heaven to Horus
the son, for him to utter as teacher
of the living on earth and preacher
to the manes in Amenta.
The wisdom of Ptah the father was
uttered by the son, who is the
Word in person. The names for
the son may be various in the several
religious cults, but the type was
one, no matter what the
name. The sayings collected in
some of the Hebrew books of wisdom,
such as the book of Proverbs,
are spoken as from the father to
his son. “My
son, attend to my words; incline
thine ear unto my sayings” (Prov. iv. 20). “Hear
me, O my son”, [Page 517] is
the formula in the book of Ecclesiasticus.
It has now to be suggested that
the mythical or divine originals
of this father and son in the books
of wisdom were the wise god Ptah
and the youthful sage Іu, the
sayer or logos, who was his manifesting
word as the son. Egyptian
literature
as such has been almost entirely lost, but amongst
the survivals
lives the oldest
book in the world. This is a book of wisdom, in
the form of sayings, maxims, precepts,
and other brief
sentences, called the Proverbs of Ptah-Hetep,
which was written in the reign
of Tet-Ka-Ra
or Assa, a Pharaoh of the fifth dynasty, who lived
5,500 years ago. The author's name
denotes that
he was the worshipper of Ptah, and his collection
contains the ancient wisdom of
Ptah, although
it is not directly ascribed to the god or to his
son, the sayer, Іu-em-hetep. In
this volume
Ptah-hetep collects the good sayings, precepts, and
proverbs
of the ancient wisdom; the words
of those who
have heard the counsels of former days and the
counsels heard of the gods. He
addresses the
god Ptah for authority to declare these words of wisdom,
speaking as from a father to his
son; and in
reply “the
majesty of this god says, Instruct
him in the sayings of former days” (Records of
the Past,2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 17). Ptah-hetep,
then, the author who wrote a book
with his own name to it 5,500 years since, assumes
the position
of the wise god Ptah addressing
his son Ιu-em-hetep, to whom the wisdom was communicated
which was
uttered in “the wise sayings, dark sentences,
and parables”, and collected in such books
as the Sayings of Jesus, the Wisdom
of Jesus, the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes,
the Wisdom of Solomon,
the Psalms, and the Book of the
Dead. We
quote a few of the sayings from Ptah-hetep, which give
us a glimpse of the intellectual height attained
by the Egyptians 5,500 years ago. “No artist is endowed with the
perfections to which he should aspire”.
“He who perverts the truthfulness of his way,
in order to repeat only what produces pleasure in the
words of every man, great or small, is a detestable
person”.
“If thou art wise, look after thy house. Love
thy wife without alloy. Fill her belly, clothe her
back, anoint her, and fulfil her desires as long as
she lives. It is a kindness which does honour to its
possessor”.
“ if thou art powerful, command only to direct”.
“To be absolute is to run into evil”.
“The gentle man penetrates all obstacles”.
“each the man of great position that one may
even do him honour”.
“ If thou hast become great who once was small,
and rich after having been poor, grow not hard of heart
because of thy prosperity. Thou hast only become the
steward of the good things of God”
Ptah was
the father
of Atum-Ra, therefore an earlier god. Memphis was
an older foundation
than On, the
northern Annu. And the wisdom of Ptah-Ιu was
indefinitely older than the writings
of the Aiu
or Jews which had been preserved in the library
at On and brought forth thence
by Osarsiph
as the basis of the Pentateuch.
But the sayings
of Jesus or logia of the Lord did
not come to
an end with the collection called the Wisdom of
Jesus,
that was translated “when Euergetes was
king”, and ascribed to two of the name of
Jesus, with Sirach interposed between.
The first gospel of the Christians
began with a collection
of the Sayings of Jesus, fatuously
supposed to have been an historic
teacher of that name. Every
sect had its collection of the
sayings that were uttered as the
word of God [Page 518] by
the Word in person, who was Horus
in the Osirian religion, or Іu, the Egyptian Jesus, to
whom the books of wisdom were attributed
thrice over, once as the son of
Ptah, once as the son of Atum-Ra,
and once as the son of leou in
the Pistis Sophia. The veil is
being torn away from the eyes
of those who were unable or
unwilling to see through it,
and dead Egypt speaks once more with a living
tongue. Explorers
are just beginning
to find some missing links betwixt the Ritual
and those “gospels” that
were canonized at last which were needed to complete
the argument concerning the Egyptian origin of
the Christian legend herein presented, and to
demonstrate beyond doubt that the historic rendering
of the mythos does but contain an exoteric version
of the esoteric wisdom. Only the other day a loose
leaf was discovered in the rubbish-heaps of Oxyrhynchus
which had belonged to some unknown collection
of the sayings or logia of “the Lord”, who
was not Jesus, a Jew in Palestine,
but Jesus or Іu-em-hetep, a god
of the Jews in Egypt (Sayings
of our Lord, Grenfell and Hunt).
It was at Memphis, we suggest,
the book of wisdom, known to later
times as Jewish, originated as
the wisdom of Ptah, whose manifestor
was Іu the coming son, who was
his logos, his word, the teacher
of his wisdom and sayer of his
sayings. Atum-Ra was born son
of Ptah as Іu-em-hetep in his primary
form. When raised to the dignity
of Ra, Ιu-em-hetep, the
typical bringer of peace and all
good things, was continued as
his son. Both
Ptah and Atum had
the title of Huhi the eternal, and each of them
was also a figure
of the one
supreme god who was both father and son in one
person. In the gnostic representation
the propator
was known to Monogenes alone, who sprang from
him. It was also taught by the
Egyptian Valentinus
that the father produced in his own image without
conjunction with the female (Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, B. I. ch. ii. I, 4, Ante-Nicene
Library). The following brief list will serve
to give an
aperçu of this divine duality in various
phases. Huhi the eternal god the
father, Ιu the ever-coming son;
Atum-Ra as father, Nefer-Atum
as the son; Osiris the father,
Horus the son; Іhuh the eternal
father, lah the messiah or ever-coming
son; Jacob- El the father, Joseph-El
the son; David the father, Solomon
the son; Іhuh the father,
Jesus the son (Christian); leou
the father, lao the son (Pistis
Sophia); Jehovah as the father,
Jesus as the son. These
are all twofold
types of the same great one god in the religion
that was established,
first at Memphis,
with Ptah as Huhi the eternal, the
self-existent, lord of everlastingness,
“he who
is”, or the “I am”, and
Іu-em-hetep
as his su, sif, or son, continued in the cult
of Atum-Ra at On, and brought forth
from Egypt
as the religion of the Ιus or Jews, who were
the worshippers of Huhi the eternal
and of Іu the
ever-coming messianic son,
which dual
type was also represented by the old lion
and the young
one, by the bull and the bullock, and by the ass
and the foal of an ass. Moreover,
it is recorded
in the Hebrew legend that
the one god
of Israel was made known to Moses under two
entirely different
names. In two passages the name given is [ 
] (Ex. xv. ii. and xvii. 16). Moses says, “lah
is my strength
and song”. “This is my God and I will praise
him”. The
other name is [ 
], rendered Jehovah. Under both names it is
the one lord. Under both names
the god is celebrated in the Psalms.
Then [Page 519] the
name of lah is dropped altogether,
except by Isaiah, who combines
the two names under the one title
of [  ],
rendered “Jehovah
- Jah”, or the Lord Jehovah (Is. xii. 2).
These two names, we repeat, represent
the Egyptian names of Іu = lah
for god the ever-coming son,
and Huhi = Іhuh the eternal father,
who was the one god as Atum-Ra.
Thus Isaiah's Іah-Jehovah combines the names of
both the father and the son in the name
of Israel's one god. And now,
as the two characters of Huhi (Іhuh)
and Іu (lah) met in one person
and the two names were combined
in lah-Іhuh, it appears probable
that both the names were blended
in one word to form the divine
name of Іhuh [ or 
] in Hebrew, by compounding those of Іu and
Huh, thus, I u- Huh, as a title
of the eternal one. Ιu would then
be represented by the Ï or yod alone, and
the final form would be Іhuh, which,
with the introduction of the
Hebrew letter vav, was extended
into Javeh and Jehovah for Jewish
and Christian use.
An insuperable
difficulty was bequeathed to the later
monotheists of Israel in the mystery of a
biune being consisting of a
father and
son who were but one in person. This needed
a knowledge of the ancient wisdom
to explicate
the doctrine. How could the one god be two,
or the twain one, to the
plain and unsophisticated
man ? There was no abstract conception
of anyone god in two persons. or three, or
153 (Rit., ch. 141) as a spiritual entity. The
origins are rooted
in the phenomena of external nature,
and have to be interpreted by means of sign-language
and
the mythical mode of representation.
The Jews had got the father and son, and finally
knew not
what to do with both. The son was
a perpetual difficulty in their writings, which
repeated fragments
of Egyptian mythos in the old dark
sayings without the oral wisdom of the Gnostics,
and left a stumbling-
block that has remained to trip
up all good, dunder-headed Christians. Still the
son is present, as the anointed
Son of God, the Christ that was,
who has been all along mistaken for the Christ
that was to
be and is not yet, although the
reign of the son as Ichthus in Pisces is nearly
ended now, and
the Pisciculi are gasping for breath
like little fishes out of water. Jewish
theologians
did their utmost to suppress the sonship of the
god-head, as well as to
get
rid of the motherhood. This was
preparatory
to the rejection of the sonship altogether when
presented
in the scheme of “historic” Christianity.
They pursued their messianic phantom
to the verge of the quagmire, but
drew back in time to escape.
They left it for the Christians
to take the final fatal plunge
into the bog in which they have wallowed,
always sinking, ever since; and
if the Jews did but know it, the
writings called Jewish have wrought
an appalling avengement on their
ignorant persecutors, who are still
proving themselves to be Christians.
as in Russia, by ignominiously
mutilating and pitilessly massacring
the Jews. Their god, like
the Mohammedan deity, was to be
a father who never had a son. To
put it in Egyptian terms, they held
to their one god Іhuh the eternal,
as the fixed and everlasting fact,
and dropped the Ιu or ever-becoming
son, together with the modus operandi of becoming, whether astronomical
or eschatological, and so
they parted company with the followers
of Ptah-Ιu and of Atum-Ιu. Or
rather the son was turned into the subject of prophecy,
whose [Page 520] ultimate coming was supposed
to be fulfilled in the cult of
Christianity. Thus the Jews are worshippers of
the father, whereas
the Christians substituted the
son. These are two branches of the original religion
in which
the one god connoted the father
and the son, who was Huhi or Іhuh the eternal,
with Іu as the ever-coming
cyclical manifestor for the father
in the sphere of time.
Celsus casts it up against
Moses, as
leader of the Israelites, that
he deceived them with his magical tricks, and misled
them into
the belief that there was but one
god (Origen, Contra Celsum, ch. 23). For
good or evil, however, the one god was established
on the ground herein set forth,
and this as
[  ] the Hebrew
god, the eternal, self-existent,
supreme one, whose other name is
[  ], lah,
lao, or Іu. These are the two lords who constitute
the one god in the Hebrew version
of the Egyptian
doctrine. In destroying the
cities of the
plain it is said, “The
Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah
brimstone and fire from the
Lord out of heaven” (Gen. xix. 24, 25),
which is identical with Horus the lord as Har-Tema,
the son who avenges his father Osiris in the great
judgment and destruction of the condemned, who
are overwhelmed in the cities of the plain because
the occurrence is on the level at the place of
equilibrium in the equinox of which there was
a yearly representation in the mysteries of Amenta.
There may be an attempt at times to conceal the
dual personality in the phraseology, as when the
Psalmist says, “God standeth in the congregation
of gods”.
“He judgeth among the gods” (Ps. lxxxii.
I). But
the writer lets in a flood of polytheism at the
same time that
he acknowledges the duality of Іhuh. In one psalm the
anointed
son is begotten (Ps. ii.); in another he is appointed (Ps.
lxxxix.)
as the holy one of Israel. In the latter instance
it is David who is made the anointed
son. Isaiah
proclaims the god of Israel to be “the everlasting
father” or father of eternity at the same
time that he is the “prince of peace” who
was the ever-coming son as Horus or Іu-em-hetep,
the prince of eternity in the astronomical mythos
of Egypt and the prince of peace in the eschatology. - “For
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the
government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall
be called [  ]” (rendered
wonderful), “councillor, mighty God, the
father of eternity, prince of peace” (Is.
ix. 6, 7). This song, uplifted
so majestically by the music of
Handel, might have been sung at
On, or Memphis, many thousand years
ago, as regards the subject-matter,
which is purely Egyptian.
Atum was the father of eternity,
and Іu-em-hetep, the su or son,
was the prince of peace, and these
two were one. Probably
the Hebrew
word  (pehla)
represents the Egyptian pera or pela=to appear,
show a great
sight, in relation to the messianic manifestor,
who was the messu or child, the
prince of peace,
and who “bore the government upon his shoulder” in
a symbolical way peculiarly Egyptian.
Atum, in his dual character of father and son,
is he who
says, “I am he that closeth and he that
openeth, and I am but one” (Rit., ch. 17).
This doctrine of divine duality
was based upon the Egyptian Pharaoh
as the father and the repa
or heir-apparent as the son - the
ever-coming king in the person
of the prince who was always born
to be a king. The father was king
of Egypt, the son was the prince
of [Page 521] Ethiopia,
which was the birthplace of an earlier
time and remained the typical
birthplace of the young prince
of eternity for all time. The
messu was the root of the Messiah
by nature and by name. The prince
of Ethiopia is the messu whence
the Messiah is Ιu the son, messu
or messu-Іahu-that is, Іahu
as the son or repa. In
the mythical representation Horus was reborn each year
as the messu, and the rebirth was celebrated
by the festival called the Messiu.
The repa symbolized the succession of Ra, or the sun,
to himself,
in a mode of showing that the god
or the king never died, but continued for ever by transformation
of the father into the son.
The transformation was also seen
in the old moon changing into the
new, and the
sun that set or died, to rise again
as the old one who became young. This was symbolically
rendered
as the old beetle that went underground
to hatch its seed and die, to issue forth again renewed
in its young. The Pharaoh transformed
into his
own son and manifestor as the repa,
Atum into Ιu-em-hetep, Osiris into Horus, Jacob into
Joseph,
and Іhuh into the Messiah. This
transformation occurred in natural phenomena periodically,
therefore
at the end of some particular cycle
of time which was always indefinite for those who knew
not the
method of measurement astronomically.
The Lord and his anointed as father and son had been
already
represented at Memphis by Ptah
and Ιu-em-hetep, at On by Atum and Nefer-Atum, at Abydos
by Osiris
and Horus of the resurrection.
The lord's anointed was the second Horus, Horus the
adult, Horus who
rose again in spirit after death
to manifest the glory of the father with the holy oil
upon his
shining face which made him the anointed. The
Lord's anointed, called the Messiah in Hebrew, the
Kristos in
Greek ,and Chrestus in Latin, is
the Messu in Egyptian. Messu signifies
the son, the
child, or heir-apparent, the prince of Ethiopia.
As human he was the repa, son of
the Pharaoh.
As divine he is the son of god. Messu is also
an Egyptian word signifying the
anointed and
to be anointed.
The Lord and
his anointed
are frequently
mentioned in the Hebrew writings. These are the
father and
son, equivalent to Osiris and
Horus his
son; also to Ptah and I u the prince of peace. “The
Lord shalt exalt the horn of his
anointed” (I.
Samuel, ii. 10). “Here I am: witness against
me before the Lord and before his
anointed” (I.
Samuel, xii. 3). “The kings of the earth
set themselves, and the rulers
take counsel together, against
the Lord and against his anointed” (
I. Ps. ii. 2 ). “The Lord showeth loving-kindness
to his anointed” (Ps. xviii. 50). “ The
Lord saveth his anointed; he will
answer him from his holy heaven” (Ps. xx.
6). “He
is a strong-hold of salvation
to his anointed” (Ps.
xxviii. 8). “Behold our shield, O God, and
look upon the face of thine anointed” (Ps.
lxxxiv. 9). “Thine enemies have reproached the
footsteps of thine anointed” (Ps. lxxxix.
51), who was the witness and the
messenger that showed the way of
the Lord in the heavens, in
the earth, in the waters and in
the nethermost depths of Sheol.
The “anointed
of the Lord” was
the very breath of their nostrils
to them who had said, “Under his shadow
we shall live among nations” (Lam. iv. 20). “The
Lord goes forth or the victory
with his anointed” (Hab. iii. 13). This duality of
Іhuh and the Messiah or reborn
son was the source of a great dilemma
to the Jews, and the cause of a
conflict betwixt their monotheism
and the Messiahship. They knew
of a [Page 522] doctrine
concerning the Messiah, but were
afraid of the astronomical fulfilment
being mistaken for the humanly
historical, and thus insisted all
the more upon the divine unity
in its simplicity. In the Ritual
Horus is described as the son
who converses with the father.
He is thus addressed, “O son who conversest
with
thy father!” ( ch. 32 ). This
character is ascribed to David as the divine
son in the Psalms he who declares, “ the
Lord said unto
me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten
thee” (Ps.
ii. 7). In the same psalm the Lord is said to
have begotten
his anointed son and set him as the king upon his
holy hill in Zion. This
is the son
as the divine avenger of whom it is said, “Kiss
the son, lest he be angry and ye perish by the
way, for his
wrath will
soon be kindled”. The father
says to his
son, “Ask of me, and I
will give thee
the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for
thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou
shalt dash them in pieces
like a potter's
vessel” (Ps. ii. 7,
8, 9). In the
Ritual (chs. 17 and 175), this avenger is the son
who “cometh red
with wrath
as the heir of Osiris seated upon the throne of
the dweller in the lake of
twofold fire”. This is Horus who says
to his father
after the periodic
battle with the evil powers, “I,
thy son Horus,
come to thee”.
“I have avenged thee. I have overthrown thy foes,
I have established all those who were of thy substance
upon the earth for ever”. That
is when he returns to the father in heaven with his
work accomplished on the earth and in
Amenta. In the time of Isaiah and
of the Hebrew psalmist the type of the son, the chosen
one,
the servant who became the beloved
of the Lord, was extant as a man, not merely as the
lamb or
the branch. It is the same type
in the gospels, which were written with reference all
through
to the figure that was pre-extant
(Ps. ii. 7, 12; Is. xlii. I; Matt. chap. iii. I to
3). Moreover,
the same things were said of that
type in the earlier as in the later time. He was equally
the
crucified or suffering Messiah;
gall was given to him for meat, and vinegar for drink
(Ps. lxix.
21). He was bound in his hands
and feet; his garments were parted amongst his spoilers,
who cast lots
for his vesture (Ps. xxii. 18).
All that was fabled to have been historically acted
at a later period
had been already fulfilled with
non-historical significance. It is the same also with
the character
of John the Baptist as with Jesus in the gospels. In
defiance of the fact that the event is contemporary
with or had occurred previously
in the prophetic
writings, the Christian
world supposes
that the so-called prophecies simply refer
to a Messiah
who is to come in a “personal and historical
character”. Thus it is assumed that the “prophecy” of
Isaiah, “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare
ye in the wilderness the way of
the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway
for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted and
every mountain and hill shall be made low, when
the uneven shall
be made level, and the rough places
a plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” (Is.
xI. 3-5; Matt. iii. 3); it is
assumed that this was historically
fulfilled when the passage is
quoted in the gospel according
to Matthew and applied to John
the Baptist, whereas the alleged
history in the New Testament is
based upon the supposed fulfilment
of this prophecy in the Old. Yet it
is only a fragment
repeated from the Egyptian mythos, in which Anup
was the crier
in the wilderness
and [Page 523] the
guide in the ways of darkness through which the
road was made from equinox
to equinox
in the desert of the under-world.
When reduced
to their proper level, the elevation
of the valley
and the lowering of the mountain are but another
mode of describing the equinoxes.
Anup was the
precursor, the forerunner, the
prophet of
Horus the Lord who came in glory, and
the preparer
of his way. As such he appears in the opening
chapter of the Ritual, where we
read, “O
openers of roads! O guides of paths
to the soul
made in the
abode of Osiris
(the house
of heaven with
thirty-six
gates), open
ye the roads!
Level ye the
paths to the
Osiris” That
is, bring the
lofty low in
process of
levelling or
making the
road equal
in the mount of the equinox at the coming
of Horus the
lord. Horus
as lord of
the two horizons
was Har-Makhu,
lord of the
equinoctial
level. At
the time of the Easter equinox the path was made
level, the valley exalted, and
the mountain
brought low at the coming of Har-Makhu who revealed
the
glory of the lord.
If the Jews
had only held
on to the sonship of Ιu, the su or sif, they might
have spoiled the market for the
spurious wares
of the historic “Saviour,
and saved the
world from wars innumerable, and from countless
broken hearts and immeasurable
mental misery.
But they let go the sonship of [  ]
with the
growth of their monolatry. They could not substitute the “historic”
sonship; they had lost touch with Egypt,
and the wisdom that might have set them
right was no longer available against the Christian
misconstruction. They failed to fight
the battle of the gnostics, and retired from
the conflict dour and dumb; strong and
firm enough to suffer the blind and brutal Juden-Hetze of all these
centuries, but powerless to bring forward
their natural allies the Egyptian reserves, and
helpless to conclude
a treaty or enforce a truce. The
Jews have suffered and been damned along the line
of 1,800 years
on account of the false belief
which they unwittingly helped to foster; and if
they should still suffer
slinkingly for gross gains instead
of turning round and rending their persecutors
and helping
us to win the battle for universal
freedom, when once the truth is made known to
them, they will,
if such a fate were possible, be
deserving of eternal damnation in the Christian
hell. The rootage
of matters like these lies out
of sight, and is not to be bottomed in the Hebrew
scriptures, but
such passages as those quoted show
the existence of a god the father and a god the
son. Not
a son who is to be begotten at some future period
by miraculous interposition of
divine power playing pranks with human nature
in a female form. The
anointed son was then begotten
and already extant. It was he who suffered like
Horus in one character,
and who came like Horus in the
other as the arm-Iifter of the lord, the avenger
red with wrath, to rule
with a rod of iron, not on this
earth but in the earth of eternity, the Sheol
of the Psalms, And
on account of this language in
the Cursing Psalms, as they have been called,
the militant Christians
have claimed a divine sanction
for all their brutality in going forth with fire
and sword to blast the
face of this fair earth and slay
the utterly astonished natives of other lands
who would not or could
not accept a doctrine so damnable
as a revelation
emanating from the most high God. The
Psalmist celebrates
this son of God, his begettal, his advent, but
offers no real
clue to the
nature of the sonship; and the Christians, knowing [Page
524] nothing
of the astronomical mythology or of the Egyptian
eschatology, could only conclude that
it must be historical. No “Jewish monotheist” could
explicate the duality of the deity.
The Psalmist celebrates the coming
of the Lord, but who the
Lord is or what the advent may
be it is impossible to tell when
the mythical background has been
left out of view by the adapters
of the ancient matter. As Egyptian,
Іu the son is the ever-coming
one as the means by which the father
of eternity manifests in time and
other natural phenomena.
As Egyptian, the divine duad of
father and son had been Ptah and
Іu, or Atum and Іu, or Osiris
and Horus, according to the cult
through pre-Hebraic and pre-Christian
ages. In Israel it might be
Jacob-El the father, with Joseph-El
as the beloved son; or Abraham
with Isaac, the sacrificial son;
or Іhuh and David, the divinely-begotten
son; or David and Solomon, the
wise youth and prince
of peace.
It has now to be shown
that these two represent the father
and his beloved son who are
Іhuh and David in the book of Psalms.
These are the two lords as the
Lord and the Lord's anointed
in Psalm cx.: “The Lord said unto my Lord,
sit thou at my right hand until
I make thine enemies thy footstool. The
Lord shall stretch forth the rod of thy strength
out of Zion. In the beauty of holiness
from the womb
of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth.
Thou art a priest for ever after
the order of
Melchizedek” (Ps. cx. 4). That is the Lord
who is the “coming son” in all the
so-called prophecies; and David is the son who
thus converses with the father as Horus did with
Ra, or as Jesus is represented in converse with
Jehovah. As a divine personage David is a form
of the beloved son; hence perhaps the origin of
his name. David, Daoud, or Dood means the beloved;
and as a mythical character the beloved one, the
Lord's anointed, the Messiah, is the son of Іhuh,
not the son of Jesse, who is not mentioned in
the Psalms. This is the typical character with
which we are now concerned, the original in the
mythos who afterwards became a subject for the
popular märchen. The inscription on the Moabite
Stone shows that the Israelites of the northern
kingdom worshipped a deity named Dodo or Dod (
= David) by the side of Іhuh, “or rather
they adored the supreme god under the name of
Dodo as well as under that of Іhuh” (Sayce,
Hib. Lectures, pp. 56, 57). Mesha, the Moabite
king, announces that he has carried away the altars
of Dodo and “dragged them before Chemosh”, Dodo
and Іhuh being David and Іhuh as
two divinities, or the one god
in the dual character of father
and son. And if, like Jacob-EI,
Joseph-EI, and Israel, David was
a god, it follows that the son
assigned to him as Solomon was
so likewise. Only
a divinity could
be the prince of peace. Solomon was also a form
of the divine son
called the
beloved. Hence the prophet Nathan gives him the
name of
Jedidiah, the “beloved of the Lord” (11.
Sam. xii. 24, 25). And the beloved
son was the messianic or anointed
son.
In addition to the
divine duality of father and son
which was imaged in Ptah and Kheper,
Atum and Іu, Osiris and Horus,
Іhuh, and lah, and the Egypto-gnostic
leou and lao, there was a twofold
nature manifested in
the sonship human and divine. This
has been one of the most profound
of the ancient and most perplexing
of [Page 525] modern
mysteries. It is to the Egyptian wisdom we
must turn if we would trace
the origin of this messianic mystery
to the root in nature. But there
is no beginning with the solar
mythos. As it is said of Jesus,
there are three which bear witness
that the Messiah came in the
water, in the blood, and in the
spirit (I. John, v. 6, 7). As
Egyptian, the first was Horus
who came by water in the inundation,
the second was Horus who came in
the blood of Isis, the third is Horus
of the resurrection, who came again
in the spirit; and, as Horus in
these characters, “the
three agree in one”. The Book of
the Dead describes the source and
origin of life as water and the
water-plants. This
was religiously commemorated as a mystery of
Amenta. The
water-spring was imaged in the tuat
of the nether-world, “which nobody can fathom”, and
the offerings of which are “edible plants” (Rit.
ch. 172), the water-plant being a form of primeval
food. Thus Horus on his papyrus springing from
the water represents the soul of life that came
by water in or as primeval food. Hence he was
depicted as the shoot. He would now be called
the spirit of vegetation, born of water. Horus
is also imaged as the child that issues from the
plant or from the mother earth. The child = the
shoot was typical of an ever-renewing and eternal
youth; hence Horus the eternal child. The Egyptian “eternal” was aeonian
and ever-coming, whether figured
by the shoot or as the child. Horus
came by water annually,
and brought abundant food. There
was famine when the water failed,
and therefore Horus as the spirit
of vegetation was a kind of saviour
to the world. He came from Ethiopia
as the messu. The messu
in Egyptian is the child, and Horus
was the messu of the inundation,
the water-born upon his papyrus,
and an image of the source and
sustenance of life born of a mother
who was ever-virgin but non-human. Such
is the root origin of the messianic mystery,
and also of the mythical virgin
and her ever-coming
child. But the ever-coming child not only came
by water. He also came by blood
as Horus who
was incarnated in the blood of Isis. Thus Horus of
the incarnation was the child that
came by blood
and was made flesh by her who doctrinally was
the ever-virgin mother. This is
the elder Horus,
the eternal child of her who was known to the
gnostics as the eternal virgin.
This duality
in the sonship of Horus has its origin in his twofold
advent and his twofold character,
which implied
a twofold motherhood. In the
first he was
the child of the virgin mother as the
soul of the
mother only. In the second he was Horus in spirit,
the beloved only-begotten son of
the father
in heaven, who was Ra the Holy Spirit. Horus in two
of his characters is palpably depicted
in the Hebrew
scriptures. In the first he
is Horus, who
in the Ritual (ch. I 15) is called
the “Afflicted
One”. This was the Horus of the incarnation,
the god made flesh in the imperfect
human form, the type of voluntary
sacrifice, the image of
suffering; being an innocent little
child, maimed in the lower members,
marred in his visage, lame
and blind and dumb, and altogether
imperfect. No man upon the cross
or in the Tat-tree could
ever make appeal to equal this,
the most pathetic picture in
the world. And
Horus, “lord
of resurrections” from
the house of darkness (Rit. ch.
64), who as the first “of them that slept” woke
up in death as the “soul most mighty” and
burst the mummy-bandages and rent
the tomb asunder and arose as Horus divinized, [Page 526] the
victor over death and hell and all the
powers of evil, is the most triumphant figure in
the world.
A
piteous portrait of the first Horus,
the afflicted sufferer, is depicted by Isaiah. “Behold,
my servant shall deal wisely; he
shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very
high. Like as
many were astonished at thee (his
visage was so marred more than any man, and his
form more than
the sons of men)”.
“ Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath
the arm of the Lord been revealed ? For he grew up
before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of
a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and
when we see him, there is no beauty that we should
desire him. He was despised and rejected of men; a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one
from whom men hide their face he was despised, and
we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our
peace was upon him, and
with his stripes we are healed. He
was oppressed, yet he humbled himself and opened
not his mouth; as a lamb that is
led to the
slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers
is dumb:
yea, he opened not his mouth. And
they made his
grave with the wicked and with the rich in his
deaths. Thou shalt make his soul
an offering
for sin” ( ch. 53). The character here portrayed
for the MessІah is that of the Messu-Horus in
every feature, except that he was not “wounded
for our transgressions” nor “bruised
for our iniquities”. The EgyptІans were indefinitely
older than the Semites, but had never heard of
the world being lost by Adam's fall, or its need
of an historic saviour who should take the place
and act the part of the Jewish scapegoat. The
later doctrine of vicarious atonement has been
added. That is Semitic, not EgyptІan. Osiris of
the mysteries was dramatically represented as
a victim, but not as a vicarious sacrifice on
account of human “transgressions” or “iniquities”.
Osiris, the good being, gave his life that
men and animals might live, which
was in providing the elements
of water and food. This was commemorated
in the sacramental meal, at which
his body was eaten
as the bread of life and his blood
was drunk in the red wine or beer.
The doctrine itself is indefinitely
older. The Great Mother was imaged
earlier still as the giver of life
and sustenance in or as the
tree by Hathor, who was imaged
in the sycamore fig as the tree
of life, which was her body; and
by the CyprІan Venus, who was apparently
bound upon the tree. In neither
case is there
any doctrine of the scapegoat, neither as animal,
human being,
or divine Horus
is said to be the altar and the offering in one,
and a form of the altar is the
tat. The tat-cross
was the tree, whether
of Hathor or
Horus, of Osiris or Ptah. But there was no sufferer
on it or in
it who bore the sins of the world.
That is a doctrine
of barbarous, non-EgyptІan ignorance,
only fit for
cowards, slaves, and criminals. The only substitution
in the OsirІan religion is when
Horus becomes
the voluntary substitute for
the suffering
god the father as a type of divine
sonship and
an example for all men to follow in the war of
good
against evil. But there is no scapegoat
and no innocent
victim of divine wrath, no expІatory
sacrifice in the EgyptІan eschatology.
That was a
perversion of the EgyptІan doctrine. There is
a sacrificІal victim as Child-Horus,
but it was
a voluntary sacrifice. [Page 527] He
comes to earth and takes upon himself the burden
of mortality,
and is conscious that he has
to suffer and
die in order that he may demonstrate
the resurrection
in spirit to the manes in Amenta and to men on
earth. He comes as the calf of
the sacrificІal
herd, and in a body that will be eaten at the
sacramental meal (Rit., ch. 105). “In his
deaths”, which are periodic, he comes to
an end on behalf of the father
in heaven, at whose table he will
ultimately rest (Rit.,ch. 70). The elder Horus in the OsirІan
cult is that child of the virgin mother
who in a second phase and at the second advent
is the father's own begotten and beloved
son, who takes upon himself to suffer
in the father's and the mother's stead, not
only in the phenomena of external nature,
but also as a figure of the human soul
immersed in matter. This involved the doctrines of
the incarnation, the virgin mother, baptismal
regeneration, the begettal of the anointed
son as Horus of the resurrection, Horus
the great judge, Horus the avenger, Horus the
spirit glorified in the likeness of the
father. He dwelt on earth as mortal Horus in the
house of Seb (earth) until he was twelve
years of age. He went down to Amenta
as the human soul in death, or as the sun of winter
sinking in the solstice. He rose again
from the dead in search of his father, whom he
had not known on earth. The
father, as Osiris in Amenta, had been overcome
by Sut, the power of darkness. Horus rises in Amenta
as the avenger; he
rises as “the living soul”, Horus
who now comes
in the spirit
(Rit., ch. 5). He comes to see Osiris
and to drive away
the darkness
(ch. 9). He
comes as the beloved son to seek for
Sut, the adversary of Osiris,
in the nether
earth, and
pierce him to the heart ( ch. I I ).
The teaching of the Ritual
is that sacrifice
was of a twofold
nature. In one aspect of the doctrine
it was voluntary,
in the other
it was vengeful
and piacular. This doctrine was brought
on at second-hand
in Rome as
the bloody
and unbloody sacrifice, both being associated
with one victim there
instead of
two. But as
Egyptian there were two, one innocent
and one guilty. Osiris
or Child-Horus
of the mysteries
was the voluntary victim of the unbloody
sacrifice, and Sut
the victim
of the vengeful
sacrifice that is celebrated in the Ritual
on the night
of the great
slaughter and
the manuring of the fields with blood.
Osiris was the voluntary
sacrifice.
He was the
god who gave himself in all the elements
of life that all his
creatures might
have life.
He came to earth or manifested in the
water, and in flesh
and blood,
in vegetation
and cultivated corn, or, more abstractly,
as the bread from heaven.For
the later providence
was imaged in some likeness of the primitive provider.
Hence
Osiris is depicted
as the wet-nurse with a myriad mammae. The
Great Mother as the bringer of
plenty might be superseded together with her seven
cows, and Isis,
the good lady, by Osiris as Un-Nefer,
the good being, with whom she was united in one;
but still
the figure of food and drink remained
as an eternal type, when the god gave “the
food that never perishes” by the incorporation,
or the later incarnation, of himself. This was
the voluntary
victim who was made a sacrifice
in the Osirian mysteries. As represented, he was
slain by Sut,
the leader of the evil powers,
on the night of the great battle. Then followed
the vast vengeful
sacrifice of Sut and his co-conspirators,
who in the form of the Typhonian animals were slain
upon the highway of the damned
so long as there
was any blood to flow. [Page 528]
The
vengeful sacrifice is also shown when Apap, the
enemy of Ra, is slain.
It is said, “Apap is stricken
with swords; he is sacrificed” (Book of Hades,
Records, vol. xii). Horus the child was
the typical babe and suckling that
was accredited with a revelation
beyond the range of human faculty
concerning things that were hidden
from the wise and understanding. That
was in a mystery, not meant for an apotheosis
of infants or simpletons and bibliolators.
Horus the human
was the child, and the divine Horus
was the prince, the repa with the
kingly countenance;
and these are alluded to disparagingly by lahu
when he says of the people of Israel,
“I will give
children to be their princes, and babes shall
rule over them” (Is. iii. 4). Human Horus
came to earth in the character
of a little child, a type of gentleness
otherwise figured as a lamb
or a calf. This typical little
child is described by Isaiah in
his millennial account of the Messiah
who came periodically as the bringer
of peace, Іu-em-hetep or Horus,
or the Hebrew Mes-Іah,
which is equivalent to Mes-Ιu the
coming child in Egyptian, who is
otherwise the Іu-su, son of
Atum and Ιusaas. “And the wolf
shall dwell with the lamb, and
the leopard shall lie down with
the kid; and the calf and the young
lion falling together; and a little
child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall
feed; their young ones shall lie
down together; and the lion shall
eat straw like the ox. “And the
sucking child shall play on the
hole of the asp, and the weaned
child shall put his hand on the
adder's den. They
shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” (Is.
xi. 6, 9). This little child was the human Horus
in the Egyptian mythos. The tender plant that
springs up out of the dry ground, in the prophecy
of Isaiah, is also represented both in the Osirian
religion and in the earlier cult of Atum-Ra. Horus,
the branch, or natzer, was the branch of the unbu
or golden bough. The speaker in this character
says (Rit., ch. 71, Renouf), “ I am unbu
of An-ar-f, the flower in the abode of occultation”. An-ar-f
denotes the abode of the sightless Horus, who
was encircled by darkness and obscurity. It was
there, in a waste place where nothing; grew, that
the golden unbu, or golden bough, burst into blossom
as the living shoot from out the soil or the annually
decaying tree of vegetable life, as offspring
of the sun. Child-Horus as the natzer or Messiah
was the “tender plant” that literally grew
up “as a root out of a dry ground”. As
the plant of Anrutef he is rooted
in the dry desert (Rit., ch. lxxi; cf Is. Iviii. II) which
precedes the place of emergence from Amenta
in the east. The
dry ground was intensely actual in Egypt at the time
of the winter solstice, when the land was left
waterless. It was the season of coming drought
that was reflected in the wilderness
of Anrutef, through which the
suffering sun god had to pass.
It was there that Isis sought the
water of life which was imaged
as her lost Osiris. In this desert
Horus suffered his great thirst,
and here he sprang up as the
tender plant from a root in the
dry ground when nourished at the
breasts of his mother. He had
no form or comeliness, because
he was that amorphous product of
the virgin that lacked the soul
and seal of the authenticating fatherhood
which conferred the grace and favour
upon Horus the divinized
adult. This was the human Horus
who was but human in the way already
indicated as the maimed, crippled,
shapeless, dumb, blind, impubescent
product of the mother nature only.
It was the ancient Child-Horus
who was continued in the catacombs [Page 529] as
the little old and ugly Christ. “ He hath no
form nor comeliness” (says Isaiah), “and
when we see him there is no beauty
that we should desire him; as one
from whom men hide their face
he was despised. .Or as one who hid his face from men. The
man of sorrows who had neither form nor comeliness was
but a typical, not a natural man, still less an
historic personage who hid his face and opened
not his mouth; and the type was identical with
that amorphous birth of the gnostic Sophia which
she produced when flowing away into immensity
until she was crossed and stayed by Stauros, who
stopped the issue of blood. Both were the same
as the imperfect, inarticulate child of Isis.
The tender plant of Isaiah is one with Horus the
shoot, who is also called a plant out of the Nun.
The Hebrew man of sorrows is thus doubly identified
with the human Horus, and only in the human Horus
do we reach the genesis in nature of that Jesus
who was reputed to have been born of flowing not
of concreted blood. For mystical reasons this
was the child who never could become a man, and
never did; the typical victim of this sacrifice
always remained a child. And because
the Horus was but a type, he could be
represented by the red shoot, the red fruit, the
red calf or lamb, the red crown,
or the red sun as sufferer in the winter
solstice. Various types
of this meek and lowly Horus made
divine appeal to human tenderness and
melted their way to the
heart on behalf of the suffering
mother and her dear, deaf, dumb, and
sightless little one, the
child of silence, who was her Logos
in sign-language.
The duality
represented by Horus the Messiah in
his two-fold character is described
in the Ritual
from the root. This is the chapter (Renouf,
115)
by which the manes cometh forth
into heaven,
or the Child-Horus changes into the Arm
of the Lord,
the mortal Horus into Horus the
immortal. The
speaker says, “I know
the powers
of Annu. Doth not the all-powerful issue
forth like one
who extendeth a hand to us ? It
is with reference
to me the gods say, Lo the Afflicted
One, who
is the heir of Annu ! I know on
what occasion
the lock of the male-child was made.
Ra was speaking
with Amhauf, and a blindness came
upon him. Ra
said to Amhauf, Take the spear, O offspring
of
men. And Amhauf said, The spear
is taken.“Whatsoever
the meaning
of this instruction, the result was that” two brethren came into
being. They were Heb-Ra and Sotemanes, whose arm
resteth not. As Child-Horus, he assumed the form
of a female with the lock, which became the lock
in Annu. Sotemanes is an image of Horus as the
arm of Osiris. This is the arm that takes the
spear to wield the weapon mightily. The Child-Horus
might be of either sex, and the lock of childhood
was worn by him as the type of both sexes. In
his condition of blindness Horus of the lock was
the afflicted one, but he is still the heir of
Annu. That is the city where the transformation
takes place in the temple. “Active and powerful
is the heir of the temple, the active one of Annu.
The flesh of his flesh is the all-seer, for he
hath the might divine as the son whom the father
hath begotten. And his will is that of the mighty
one of Annu” (Gr. Heliopolis). This, we
repeat, is the account given by
the Ritual concerning the origin
of the divine duality that was manifested
in the double Horus, as the child
of twelve years and the adult of
thirty years, the wearer of the
lock and the victorious lifter
of the arm.
Now, Horus
in these two
characters can be as clearly traced in [Page
530] the Psalms as
he is described
in the Ritual. As Horus the human he is the child
with the side-Iock, the afflicted
one, the maimed
dumb, and blind sufferer
who is persecuted
by Sut. As Horus divinized, Horus
the king's
heir, “he
hath the might divine as the son
whom the father hath begotten” - that is, begotten
in spirit for the resurrection from the dead. This
is he
whom the Psalmist celebrates: “My heart
overfloweth with a goodly matter:
I speak the things which I have
made touching the king: my
tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
Thou art fairer than the children
of men; grace is poured
into thy lips: therefore God hath
blessed thee for ever. Gird thy
sword upon thy thigh, O mighty
one, thy glory and thy majesty.
And in thy majesty ride on prosperously.
Thou hast loved righteousness
and hated wickedness: therefore
God, thy God, hath anointed thee
with the oil of gladness above
thy fellows” (Ps. xlv. 1-9). This in the
original was Horus the anointed,
the son of god, the oil of gladness
on whose face was typical
of his divinity. The person addressed
in the 45th Psalm is also recognizable
as “the
royal Horus”, Horus of the beautiful countenance.
The Psalmist continues: “All thy garments
(smell of) myrrh and aloes and
cassia; out of ivory palaces stringed
instruments have made thee
glad. Kings' daughters are among
thy honourable women: at thy right
hand doth stand the queen
in gold of Ophir” (Ps. xlv. 2, 9). Isaiah
has likewise
reproduced a portrait of Har- Tema the mighty
avenger in his
second advent,
who came at the end and re-beginning of the period
which is called the year of redemption: “Who
is this that cometh from Edom, with garments crimson
from Bozrah; he that is glorious in his apparel,
marching in the greatness of his strength, mighty
to save?”.
“Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and
thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-vat
?”.
“I have trodden the wine-press alone; and of
the people there was no man with me: yea, I trod them
in mine anger and trampled them in my fury: and their
life-blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have
stained all my raiment. For the day of vengeance was
in my heart, and the year of my redeemer is come. I
looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered
if there was none to uphold; therefore my own arm wrought
salvation unto me, and my fury it upheld me; and I
trod down the people in my anger and made them drunk
in my fury, and I poured out their life-blood on the
earth” (Is. lxiii. 1-6). This in the original
is magnificent; in its perversion it is bewildering,
but no bibliolator could possibly have known what it
was about. Hence
the endeavour to make it a matter of prophecy by
means of marginal misinterpretation; a feast
of vengeance for good Christians
to look forward to at the second coming of their
long-belated
Lord. It is not prophecy: it has
no other meaning and had no other origin than that
of the Egyptian
mythology and the mysteries of
Amenta. Horus in his human personation was the
mother's suffering
son, the victim as described by
Isaiah (chs. l ii. l iii.) and by the Psalmist
as the sacrificial
victim in the present, not in a
future. near or far (Ps. xxii.17,18; xxxi. 5; xli. 9; lxix.
21). After his death, a representative
of the Osiris rises again triumphant as the maker
of
justice visible. He does not merely
speak of righteousness. He is the just and righteous
judge who does justice
in the judgment hall of Mati on
the [Page 531] day of doom. As
the divine avenger of the suffering Osiris or
the human Horus he arises in the
person of the
red god, who is thus addressed: “O fearsome
one, thou who art over the two earths, red god
who orderest the block of execution, to whom the
double crown is given”, as Horus at his second
coming (Rit., ch. 17). He comes
back in his second advent as the
lifter of the arm, great in his
glory, as wearer of the double
crown, the terrible avenger of
the wrongs that were inflicted by the
wicked on the suffering Osiris,
or on humanity in that appealing
and pathetic representative
in the god of humanity who gave
himself a sacrifice to show the
way that others might have life. The
way of salvation was revealed by
the human Horus being divinized
in death, and emerging as an immortal
on the horizon of the resurrection,
safe beyond the valley of the shadow
and the darkness of Sheol. The
drama from which scenes are given in the Hebrew
writings, as if these things occurred
or would occur
upon the earth, belongs to the mysteries
of the Egyptian Amenta, and only
as Egyptian
could its characters ever be understood. We have to
bear in mind that the typical teacher
of Israel is
alleged to have been learned
in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians. Unfortunately,
the key of
the Mosaic writings was mislaid, and the Bible has
become a lock-up of bondage for
the prisoners
of the Christian faith. Isaiah asks, “Who
hath believed that which we have heard, and to
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” To
none, we reply, save those who
know the god who lifted up the
arm in death, who bared the holy
arm in retribution, and who wrought
salvation with it for the oppressed
who suffered from the
adversaries in Amenta. Horus-Amsu
is the god who uplifts the arm
of Osiris the lord, which he has
freed from the swathings of the
mummy as he rises from the tomb. The
buried Osiris represented the god in matter, the earthly half of the divinity,
so to say, earth
being termed his body and heaven his soul. Hence
he is imaged by one arm, one leg, one side. Hence
also the typical right and left arms. Osiris buried
in Sekhem is represented with the left arm still
bound and powerless. Horus in his resurrection
is the right arm that was lifted when he had burst
the bonds of death and got the better of Sut as
conqueror of the grave and manifestor in phenomena
both natural and eschatological for the father
in Amenta, the father of eternity, or the eternal
father, he whose son was manifestor by periodic
repetition in the sphere of time. The tat-type
of support and stability on which all rested in
Tattu is said to be the arm or shoulder of Horus
in Sekhem (Rit., 18), whose figure with the fan
or khu in his right hand will show us how the
government was on his shoulder. The abstract language
of the Jewish writings takes the place of the
earlier concrete representation and the Egyptian
symbol, which were figures or the facts that dislimn
and ultimately fade away in words. Amsu-Horus,
who rises from
the grave in Amenta with his right arm freed from
the mummy-swathe, is
designated the “lifter of the arm”, and
in this connection we may compare
a Fijian burial custom. When a
hero or distinguished “brave” is
buried, the body is interred with
the right arm lifted up above the
mould of the grave mound.
The people passing by, on seeing
this, exclaim, “Oh,
the hand that was the slayer of
men” (Lorimer
Fison, “Notes on Fijian Burial Customs,” [Page
532] Journal of the Anthropological
Institute). The natural fact was
first rendered in sign-language,
and this supplied the type to the
mythical or eschatological phase.
The Fijian custom shows
the figure, straight from nature,
of the arm-Iifter as the conqueror
in life thus imaged memorially
in death; Amsu-Horus is the lifter
of his right arm as the victor
over death. Such a custom is
by no means “ghastly” when interpreted
by the Egyptian wisdom, but a mode
of honouring the brave spirit,
which in Amsu-Horus is exhibited
as triumphant over death and all
the ills of mortality, as the arm
of the lord, the conqueror of
his father's enemies, triumphant
over death and the grave. It
was Amsu-Horus
who “hath showed strength
with his arm”, for he has wrenched and raised
it from the leaden grasp of the
burial-place and the bondage of the mummy, holding
aloft the sign
of rule and government as the express
image of potency personified. Amsu personates
the “arm
of the lord” outstretched from the mummy
of matter. He is called the arm-raiser,
and through his potency the other arm bound up
in the mummy
case is set free, and the Osiris
emerges pure spirit, with both arms intact and
both feet in
motion. “Behold” ,says the prophet; “Behold,
the Lord God will come as a mighty
one, and his arm shall rule for him” (Is.
xI. 10). In this aspect he comes as the good shepherd. “He
shall feed his flock like a shepherd;
he shall gather the lambs in his arm and carry
them in
his bosom, and gently lead those
that are with young” (Is. .xI. 11). This
was Horus the lifter of his arm
for Osiris, upon whose shoulder rested the insignia
of his government,
which included
the whip ( or flail) and the shepherd's
crook.As
the Good Shepherd Horus tends the sheep of his
father, and comes to gather them
in his fold.
He was personified as the delegated power that
drove with the whip and drew them
with the hek
of rule, which became the shepherd's crook. The
portrait of Horus the good shepherd,
who was likewise
the arm of the lord in this picture of pastoral
tenderness, was readapted by the
Hebrew writer
for the comforting of distressed Jerusalem. The
character and the picture belong
to the Amenta
in the Ritual, and these have been represented
as if belonging to this earth,
whereas the
good shepherd and the sheep, the fields of peace and
pastures of plenty beside the still waters, pertain
to hetep, the paradise of
peace. Of the “prince
of peace”, who is proclaimed by Isaiah as
having come (he came annually or periodically
in the mythos), it is said, “The government
shall be upon his shoulder” (ch. 9, 6).
So was it with the Egyptian prince of peace as
Horus the “sustainer of his father”. On
the night of setting up the tat
and of establishing Horus in the
place of the dead Osiris, Horus takes
the government upon his shoulder. It
is said, “The setting up of the tat (of
stability) means the shoulder of
Horus” - that
is, the shoulder with which he
sustains the
government
(Rit., ch.
18). In this
sense he was
the arm of
the lord, “the
lifter of the
arm,“called” the
avenger of that left arm of Osiris
which is in Sekhem”. Horus images the mummy-Osiris
in the resurrection. With the right
arm lifted he
wields the sceptre of his power
that signifies his triumph over
death and hell and the grave; he also bears the sign of government
upon his other shoulder. What a
portrait of level-browed justice
is that of Amsu-Horus, who is [Page 533] described
as the god “whose eyebrows
are like the two arms of the
balance (or scales) upon that day
when outrage is brought
to account and each
wrong is tied up to its separate
block of settlement” (
ch. 17). This is the judge in person
of the son, the god who lifteth
up his arm, and who is the
arm of the lord made manifest for
the execution of justice. And this
is the arm of the lord invoked
for the same purpose by Isaiah,
which alone explains the expression, “Mine
arm shall judge the peoples”. The veil of
words in the Hebrew constantly
conceals the wisdom of the Egyptians
that lies beyond
it in the Jewish
scriptures,
and this is the rending of the
veil. One
needs must observe in passing that if the divine
victim and the redemption from
sin were historical
and once for all, these must certainly have already
taken place when Isaiah wrote;
and if it had
been once for all it could
not have occurred
once afterwards. Besides, the same victim is described
in the Psalms
as suffering or having suffered
as the same
sacrifice. And how the Sarkolatrae have gloated
and are gloating ghoul-like over this
cowardly doctrine of the divine
victim suffering in a human form
to ransom the guilty with the blood
of the innocent, and save them
from the Nemesis of natural law
and the consequences of their own
sins. But we have to do with no
historical transactions, prophetic
or fulfilled. Horus is described
in the Ritual (ch. 17) as making
his first and second advent
in the two characters of blind
Horus (An-maati) and Horus the
avenger or reconstituter of his
father. These two forms of the
Messiah, the founder and fulfiller
of the kingdom of heaven on behalf
of the father, can now be traced
in the Hebrew scriptures, especially
in the books of the Psalms,
Isaiah, Zechariah, and Daniel. Mortal
Horus in his
humanity was born as the servant. He was the divine
heir in the likeness
of the child
that from the earliest totemic times was
born to be a servant or a slave,
which was its
natural status. He is portrayed as blind and deaf
and dumb. This is the coming Messiah
described by
Isaiah as the servant who is blind and deaf
and dumb. “As a lamb that is led to the
slaughter , and as a sheep that before her shearers
is dumb” (ch. liii. 7) “Who is blind
as my servant, or deaf as my messenger that I
send ? Who is blind as he that is made perfect,
and yet is blind as the Lord's servant?” (ch.
42). As was Horus the child, who
suffered in his mortality as the
servant and was deaf and dumb
and blind in the earth of Seb to
attain the beatific vision of the
Horus perfected in spirit. The blind
messenger described by Isaiah is
the sightless Horus, whose zootype
was the mole or shrewmouse
because it was an eyeless digger
underground, and therefore a likeness
of Horus in the darkness
of the nether earth. Human
Horus, called
the elder because the first born, and who “had
no form nor comeliness”, was
the virgin's amorphous child. Horus
divinized was the god with the beautiful face,
who was “fairer
than the children of men”, and blooming with
eternal youth as the type of immortality.
In the Jewish traditions concerning
the Coming One we
find the doctrine of a Messiah
in two aspects: in one character
he was born to suffer, in the
other he was destined to triumph.
In the one he is identical with
the maimed and suffering [Page
534] Horus, in the other
with the victorious Har-Tema.
In the first he was
to come as Joseph's son, who
would make war on the adversary
and himself be slain (as was the
elder Horus) at Jerusalem. Then
the second Messiah, called the
son of David, was to defeat the
enemy, called by the Gentiles Antichrist,
and, according to the solar imagery
employed, consume him with the
breath of his mouth. This
consummation was to be on the grandly
indefinite scale, but the tradition
preserves details of
the annual representation. When
Messiah came as conqueror in the
glory of his strength there
was to be a reign of nine months. At
the end of the nine months, Messiah Ben-Joseph was
to be revealed - that is, the sufferer who was
fore-doomed to fall, and who was
followed by the Messiah Ben-David, who was destined
to succeed.
Now, the annual cycle in the Kamite
mythos was divided into nine months and three.
The elder
Horus was born about the time of
the winter solstice, answering to the birth of
Christ at Christmas.
This is a form of the victim who
was slain or blinded by Sut the prince of darkness.
Three months
afterwards the risen Horus was
revealed upon the mount of glory as the vanquisher
of Sut. And after his
reincarnation it was nine months
before the next rebirth at Christmas.
Thus the circle was completed
both in time and space according
to the facts in nature upon which
the myth was founded (Avkath
Rochel apud Huls., pp. 22, 23,
35, 36; Eisenmenger, Endecktes
Judenthum), and the two births or advents
of Messiah Ben- Joseph and Messiah
Ben-David, at the end of nine months,
and again at the end
of three, are exactly the same
as the advent of the elder Horus
in the winter solstice and the
second coming of Horus triumphant
in or following the vernal equinox. So
necessary is the mould of the astronomical mythology
for understanding the eschatology,
whether we
call it Jewish, Egyptian, or Christian.
It is
the ruler for one year in the solar
mythos that
will account for “the year of the Lord” which
was ..the acceptable year of the Lord and the
day of vengeance of our God” proclaimed
in Israel by Isaiah (Is. 1 xi.
2). But the doctrine of a coming
Messiah who came to rule for one year
has no meaning apart from the mythos,
in which the coming was annual,
whether as Horus of the
inundation or as Ιu the youthful
solar god. It was this reign of
Messiah on the scale of one
year that bequeathed the tradition
of the one year's ministry of Jesus
re-announced by Luke
(iv. 19) from Isaiah. The
gnostics Ptolemaeus and Herakleon, also
the Christians Clement Alexander
and Origen,
who were both
from Egypt,
held this view
of the reign
that lasted
only one year.
And it was
this foundation
in the mythical
representation
which has made
it impossible
to build the gospel history on
any other basis,
or to conclusively
define any
other length
of time for
“our Lord's
public ministry”.
Whether
written by Paul or not, the Epistle
to the Hebrews
contains the
Egypto-gnostic
doctrine of
the Christ
which was taught
by Paul in
accordance
with “the
beginning of
the first principles
of the oracles
of God” - that is, of
the divine
wisdom which
was communicated
in the mysteries,
and in which
Paul was an
adept and perfect.
This, for example,
is a brief
sketch of the
two-fold Horus
who suffered as Horus in his mortality
and overcame as Horus
in spirit, who personates the redeemer
from death. This was he ..who in
the days [Page 535] of
his flesh, having
offered up
prayers and
supplications
with strong
crying and
tears unto
him that was
able to save him from death, and having
been heard for his godly fear,
though he was a son, yet learned
he obedience by the things whim
he suffered: and having been made
perfect, he became unto all them
that obey him the author of eternal
salvation” (Heb.
v. 7). This
in the Egyptian was the maimed and suffering human
Horus who was saved from death in becoming
the anointed son, the glorified
sahu, the spirit perfected, the typical initiator into
an existence
hereafter that was called salvation
to eternal life.
The change from Horus the mortal
to Horus in spirit is plainly described
by Isaiah ( ch. xlii. ). “Behold my servant whom I
uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delighteth;
I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring
forth judgment to the nation. He shall bring forth
judgment in truth”. The meek and lowly one,
the virgin's lamb, the suffering Messiah,
was Horus in a maimed and most imperfect human
form. This was the typical sufferer for the mother
and the servant of the Lord, who in his changed
and glorified estate became the only begotten
from the father; his beloved son. The spirit of
God was “put upon him” when he was
a divine hawk of soul or became
dove-headed; and he who was so
dumb and gentle that he would
not break a bruised reed was transformed
into the Horus who as Tema was
the terrible judge, the red god, and as Horus-Makheru
the judge in
very truth.
It was
on the mount of glory in the east, the
mount that rose up from Amenta, that
Messiah in his second advent came in
the glory of his father
with his angels, who were represented
as spirits of fire in attendance on the
sun or solar god.
This in the annual fulfilment was
in the vernal equinox, at the point where
the two earths were
united in one. It is also said
in the Talmud (Talmud. Cod. Sanhedrin,
ch. 3, p. 38) that the Messiah
called the son of David “will
not come till the two houses of Israel
shall be extinct”. Here
the two houses answer to the double horizons in
the Egyptian mythos which were united and made
one in the new heaven and earth established at
the advent of Horus Sam-taui, the uniter of the
two houses of the double earth. The following “prophecy” contains
an appeal to the father god on behalf of the anointed
son. “Give the king thy judgments, O God,
and thy righteousness unto the
king's son. He shall judge thy people with righteousness,
and
thy poor with judgment. The mountains
shall bring peace to the people. He
shall break in pieces
the oppressor. In his days shall the righteous
flourish, and
abundance of
peace. ...All kings shall fall down before him.
All nations shall serve him. There
shall be abundance
of corn in the earth upon
the top of
the mountains, and the fruit thereof shall shake
like Lebanon.
And they of the city shall
flourish like
grass of the earth. His name shall endure
for ever; his
name shall be continued as long as the sun,
and men shall be blessed in him;
all nations
shall call him happy” (Ps.lxxii.).
The reign of
justice, law, and righteousness was renewed at
the advent of the prince, the repa
or heir-apparent,
who came to represent the father god. The maat
or hall of justice was erected
on the plain
as the seat of Har-Tema the great judge. The
kingdom
or house of heaven was refounded
for the father
once a year by Horus, or by Jesus, the Messiah-son.
It was [Page 536] founded
upon the four quarters,
which were represented by
the four mystical
creatures, by four flag-staffs or pillars,
or by the four-fold Cross of the
tat.
Horus
is described
in both characters by Zechariah at the second coming. “And
they shall look unto him whom they pierced, and
they shall mourn
for him as one mourneth for his
only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as
one that is
in bitterness for his first-born” (Zech.
xii. 10, II). He is to come in
the “day
of the Lord”, to fight the battle called
the battle of Har-Magedon in Revelation,
which was fought annually in the
astronomical mythology.
Har-Makhu was the ancient Horus
of both horizons, more exactly
of both equinoxes, and most exactly
of the double earth that was united
annually in one at the eastern
equinox upon the Mount of Olives,
or Bakhu in Egyptian. Person, place,
event, and circumstances are all
the same as in the original.
This is the avenger Har-Makhu,
otherwise described as Har-Tema,
executor and executioner of divine
justice in the maat upon the mount
of glory. And it is to be as in
the previous manifestations. They shall look upon
him whom they
had pierced.
In the Kamite representation Horus
came periodically in the vernal
equinox as the king's son, who was
called the prince of eternity,
the royal Horus, Horus of the kingly
countenance, now made judge
of all the earth. He took his seat
upon the summit; the balance was
erected in the hall of righteousness
or of maat, where judgment was
delivered and undeviating justice
done. But
this was the annual assizes of “all souls” held
in the earth of eternity, not in Judea nor the
earth of time. Isaiah foretells that in the great
day that will come there is to be “a vineyard
of wine”: “sing ye of it. I the Lord
do keep it night and day”.
“And in the mountain shall the Lord of hosts
make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast
of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow,
of wines on the lees well refined” (Is. xxv.
6, and xxvii. 2, 3). And the coming, which was actual
in Egypt, and was celebrated yearly with the Uaka or
Nile festival, is to be fulfilled at some indefinite
future time that was chiefly known to prophecy as the
day of doom and the ending of the world.
The vine and
fig were two especial forms of the typical tree in
the garden of Hetep, Aarru, or Eden. According to the
prophecy of Micah, every man was to sit beneath his
own vine and fig-tree in the paradise of peace, with
none to make them afraid (ch. iv. 4). But this garden
of the gods and the glorified, which is relegated to
the future by the biblical writers, had been planted
by the Egyptians in a far-off past. The vine and sycamore-fig
were two types in the Kamite paradise. In the papyrus
of Nu he prays that he may sit under his “own
vine and also beneath the refreshing foliage of the
sycamore fig tree of Hathor. The
garden of Aarru is
a garden of the grape, and the god Osiris is sometimes
seated in a Naos
underneath
the vine, from which bunches of
grapes are
hanging. Moreover, Osiris was the vine, and his
son Horus-unbu
is the branch. The solar mount
was called
the mount of glory. This is in accordance with
the
natural fact. It is the same in
the Hebrew
writings. The mount of God in Exodus is the mount
of glory.
It is called the mount of the glory
of God: “The
glory of the Lord abode upon Mount [Page
537] Sinai” (Ex.
xxiv. 16). The solar nature of
the glory is
apparent
in certain
passages. “The
glory of the
Lord went up
and stood upon
the mountain
which is on
the east side
of the city” (Ez.
Xi.23). This
identifies
the solar mount
of glory. “And
in appearance the glory of the
Lord was like devouring fire on
the top of the mount in the eyes
of the children of Israel” (Ex. xxiv. 17).
The law was given to Israel on
the mount in the shape of the
Commandments, that were written
on two tablets. This corresponds
to the law of maati given in the
great judgment hall upon the
mount of glory at the place of
equilibrium, or the scales
of justice in the equinox. The
two tablets image the duality of maati, or the
two-fold law and justice. The mount
is identified
with the Egyptian judgment-seat by the statement
made to Moses in the mount: “Now these are
the judgments which thou shalt
set before them” (Ex.
xxi. I) - these being the laws distinguished
from the Ten Commandments. The
maat was the judgment-seat, the great hall, the
place or city
of truth and
righteousness. The scales of justice
were periodically erected on the
mount, whether at the vernal equinox
in the solar mythos or at the pole
in the earlier stellar representation.
Hence the application
of the maat to Jerusalem by Zechariah. “Jerusalem
shall be called the city of truth
(maati), and the mountain of the
Lord of hosts the holy mountain” (Zech.
viii. 3, 4). The Lord, he cometh, “He cometh
to guide the earth; he shall judge
the world with righteousness; righteousness
and judgment are
the foundation of his throne” (Ps. xcvi.
and xcvii.). These are the foundation
of maati, truth, righteousness,
law, and justice all being
expressed by the one word maati.
The doctrine of maati could not
be more perfectly illustrated
than it is in Psalm xlv. 6. “Thy throne,
O God, is for ever and ever; a
sceptre of equity is the sceptre
of thy kingdom”. From
the time of Tum, ie. Atum- Ιu,
the Egyptian one god was the deity
of justice, truth, and righteousness. He
is still the god of maat or maati, which
has the meaning of law, truth, justice, and right.
In this wise the mythos
and the eschatology
of Egypt were converted into matter of prophecy that
was to be fulfilled
on earth as
the mode of future realization.
The mythical
mount is also typical of two different characters,
female and male: one
was the mount
of earth, the other the mount of heaven. The worship
of the Great Mother
never died
out wholly with the children of Israel. The high places,
the asherim, the
sacred prostitutes,
the heifer, the sow, and other types were indestructible,
all
the Protestantism
and Puritanism of the monotheists notwithstanding.
Hence we are told, as something very terrible,
that Solomon built a temple to Ashtoreth “on
the right hand of the mount of corruption” (II. Kings, xxiii. 13), the
mount of the Great Mother. The female
nature of the mount of earth was
shown when
the Lord “covered the daughter
of Zion with
a cloud in his anger and cast down the beauty
of Israel”, and
is said to have “forgotten his footstool”. She
was the footstool
of Іhuh as
a type of the
earth-mother, just as Isis is the seat of
Osiris. There
is a general
casting out of the divine motherhood by the Hebrew
writers, especially
under the type
of the female mount. For the Lord of hosts was
to reign in Mount Zion after the
casting out
of the woman Wickedness, whose emblem was an abomination
in all the earth (Is. xxiv. 23). “Behold,
I am against [Page 538] thee,
O destroying mountain, saith the
Lord. I will make thee a burnt
mountain. ...Thou shalt be desolate
for ever” (Jer.
li. 25). “O my mountain in the field, I
will give thy substance and all
thy treasures for a spoil, and
thy high places, because of
sin throughout all thy borders” (Jer. xvii.
3). This was the mount of earth
and of the motherhood, and the
seat of the Great Mother in the
mount of earth or Jerusalem below
is now to be superseded by the
throne of God most high in the
holy mount of Jerusalem above.
The change is described in the
book of Zechariah. Jerusalem that
was forsaken in one sense, and
her mount of the motherhood
cast down, is to be restored
to Israel, in another character,
by the erection of another
mount and sanctuary. “Thus saith the Lord:
I am reTumed to Jerusalem with
mercies; my house shall be built
in it. The
Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose
Jerusalem” (Zech. i. 17). The mother in
the earlier cult was cast out and
her seat denounced as the mount
of corruption because she had been
worshipped and fecundated beneath
every green tree on this mons veneris of the earth
(II. Kings, xxiii. 13), in all the high places
that were consecrated to Ashtoreth
and the asherim, as the mount of
the mother. This was the hill of
Jerusalem on which her whoredoms
were committed by the daughter
of Zion (Is. x. 32). It is the
hill of Esau, and of her that “dwelt
in the clefts of the rock” as
the old earth-mother, who was now
to be swept away in the coming
day of the Lord, the mountain
that before Zerubbabel was to become
a plain for the foundation of a
new house of heaven (Zech.
iv. 7). The preparation for the
building - the four horns or corners,
the four smiths, the man with
a measuring-Iine in his hand - show
that the new Jerusalem signified
is celestial or astronomical. It
is to be built by Zerubbabel, whose hands “have
laid the foundations of this house”. The
mount that had been is to be levelled
by him and become a plain. This
was the mount of the woman
called Wickedness, whose emblem
was to be removed to the land of
Shinar, where her house was to
be built, and when it was established
she was to be set upon her own
base. The new house of
heaven or the new Jerusalem is
built upon the mountain of the
Lord, who is about to bring forth
his servant, the Branch. And now
we learn that, notwithstanding
the historic-looking instructions
given by “the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel” concerning
the building, the actual builder
is the man whose name is the
Branch. “Thus
speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying,
Behold the man whose name is
the Branch; and he shall grow up
out of his place, and he shall
build the temple of the Lord; and
he shall bear the glory, and shall
sit and rule upon his throne; and
he shall be a priest upon
his throne, and the counsel of
peace shall be between them both” (Zech.
vi. 12, 13). As Egyptian, this
builder of the temple
was Ιu-em-hetep, the prince of
peace. In one of its various
meanings the word hetep signifies
gathering
and uniting together. Hence
hetep is the
mount of congregation. This was continued as a
Hebrew title of the mount.
Isaiah
identifies “the mount of congregation”, or
place of gathering together, as
the mount in the uttermost parts
of the north - that is, with the
summit of rest at the celestial
pole (Is. xiv. 13). As is said
by the Psalmist, “The
wicked shall not stand in the judgment
nor sinners in
the congregation of the righteous” (Ps.
i. 5). In the [Page 539] midst
of the congregation will I praise
thee” (Ps.
xxii. 22). “God
standeth in the congregation of
God; he judgeth amongst the gods” (Ps. lxxxii.
I). The final landing-place in
the Egyptian paradise, where
the souls of the departed reach
an anchorage in the still waters
of hetep or peace eternal in
the heavens, is a divine district
called “the
isle of corn and barley” (Rit., ch. I 10).
This was attainable only at the
summit of Mount Hetep, the mount
of peace and everlasting plenty
in the circumpolar paradise, not
on any local mount of Zion in Judea
or in Palestine, although
it was thus literalized in the
biblical prophecies. The
great and glorious good time coming for the Egyptians
was not in
this life nor the present
world. It was in the heaven of
eternity. It
was a picture of the paradise awaiting the blessed
dead. This was portrayed twice
over; once
in the nether earth of the solar mythos, once in the
highest, earlier heaven, in the
garden of hetep
on the stellar mount. The
pictures of
this paradise in the Hebrew writings, the Psalms,
the books of
Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Zechariah, and Revelation,
were pre-extant long ages earlier
as Egyptian.
What the so-called “prophets” of
the Jews did
was to make sublunary this vision of
the good time in another life.
There were
already two Jerusalems from the time when Judea and
Palestine
were appendages of Egypt. Two Jerusalems
were recognized
by Paul, one terrestrial, one celestial.
The name of Jerusalem we read as
the Aarru-salem
or fields of peace, equivalent to Aarru-hetep
or Sekhet-hetep, the fields of
peace in Egyptian.
Jerusalem below was the localized representative
of Jerusalem above, the Aarru-salem
or Aarru-hetep
on the mount of peace in the heaven of the never-setting
stars. The burden of Jewish prophecy,
which Tumed
out so terribly misleading for
those who were
ignorant of the secret wisdom,
is that the
vision of this glorious future should be attained
on earth; whereas it never had that
meaning. But
the Hebrew non-initiates came to think it had;
they also prophesied as if they
thought it
had. Thus Jerusalem on earth was to take the place
of Jerusalem above, and the Aarru-hetep
become the
Jeru-salem simply as a mundane locality. Jerusalem
is to be rebuilt, and to be called
the City of
Truth, which had been the Maat upon the mount
in the Egyptian eschatology (Zech.
i. 16; ii.
I, 2, and 10; viii. 3). The bringer of peace is
to reTum and build the temple
of the Lord,
and the counsel of peace is to be between him and
the Lord. And “There shall be the
seed of peace; the vine shall give
her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase,
and the
heavens shall give their dew; and
I will cause the remnant of this people to inherit
all these
things” (Zech. viii. 12), “all these
things” being the things predicated of the
promised land of the mythos, the
fields of peace or gardens of Hetep
in the eschatology, the abode
of the blessed in Jerusalem above. In
this new Jerusalem
on earth it was to be as it had been in the maat
upon the mount,
where Atum
or Osiris imaged the eternal on his seat who presided
over the pole of heaven (Rit.,
ch. 7). Every
man was to speak the truth
with his neighbour,
and execute the judgment of truth and
peace in their
gates after attaining the maat. Amongst the Egyptian
sayings that have been taken literally
by the Jews
and Christians is the statement
that the
meek shall inherit the earth. We
read in the
Psalms, “Those
that wait on the Lord, they shall
inherit the land. Yet a little [Page
540] while and the wicked
shall not be. But the meek shall
inherit the land, and shall delight themselves
in the abundance
of peace. Their inheritance shall
be for ever. But the wicked shall perish. Such
as be blessed
of him shall inherit the land,
and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
The righteous
shall inherit the land. Wait on
the Lord, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the
land” (Ps.
xxxvii.). If
such promises and prophecies had applied to the lands
of this world (which they did not), our
English race would have proved
itself to have been the most righteous people on earth,
and the
landless Jews the most utterly
deceived by the Lord on whom they waited, like the
hungry animal
in the fable, when he depended
on the word of the nurse who threatened to throw the
child to
the wolf, and was deceived regarding
his supper. It never was our earth that the meek or
the righteous
were to inherit, but the land in
the earth of a future life, the land that was promised
to the
doers of right and the fulfillers
of justice on this earth, who became the cultivators
in the
fields of divine harvest for eternity.
In the Egyptian teaching this land of promise, of plenty,
and of peace was the land of Hetep,
the garden
of Aarru, the elysian fields, the
paradise of spirits perfected who were the only righteous
on the summit of the mount, which
had to be attained
by long climbing in the life hereafter
as well
as in the life on earth. That
was the only land to be attained by those who waited
on the Lord. It was a land of pure delight mapped
out in the
northern heaven, to be seen through
the darkness that covered the earth
by night. In that land
every worker had his appointed
portion given to cultivate and
bring forth his share of produce.
There were no Feringhees or eaters
of the earth up there. But change
the venue and pervert the
teaching by making this land of
promise an earthly possession,
as is done all through the biblical
writings, and you have an alleged
divine sanction and warrant for
all the robbery of land and all
the iniquity that has been perpetrated
against the weaker races of the
aborigines by God Almighty's
favourite whites. The Jews professed
to wait upon the Lord, therefore
they were to inherit the land.
The Spaniards like-wise waited
on the Lord, and therefore the
lands of the Peruvians and Mexicans
were theirs by divine right. So
has it been with the English in
America, in Australia, in Africa.
They who wait upon the Lord once
a week, or once a year upon Atonement
Day, without atonement,
shall inherit the earth. And all
the time such teaching is not only
utterly immoral, not only
ethically false; it never had the
significance assigned to it by
the Jews and Christians when
first taught by the Egyptians. A
false bottom has
thus been laid by this perversion of old Egypt's
wisdom, and on that
false bottom
have the Jews and Christians built for this world,
whereas the Egyptians laid their
foundations
for eternity.
The Egyptian wisdom,
to which the
whole wide round of the world is one
vast whispering
gallery, has been looked upon by the bibliolator
as “the materials that Revelation had
to deal with” (Cobb, Origines Judaica) - that
is, the wisdom pre-extant, for
which the Egyptians had toiled
during a dateless antiquity, becomes
divine revelation when mutilated
and misrendered in the biblical
version. For the sounder inference
to be drawn from the comparatively
late origin of the Hebrew letters
is not that the subject-matter
of the documents is necessarily [Page 541] late,
but that it was preserved in the hieroglyphic
language which was read by Osarsiph
and his fellow-priests from On,
before it was transcribed in
the later letters. The
truth is that the primary records on which the
Bible was based
were not a product of the Palestinian
Jews. In the original scriptures
no mistakes
are made by the speaker as to the nature of the promises
or the place of performance. In one of the
rubrics to the Ritual it is
said: “If this chapter
be recited over him (the deceased), he will make
his exodus and go forth over the earth, and he
will pass through every kind of fire, no evil
thing being able to hurt him”. But this was
in making his progress over the
earth of Amenta, the land of life,
as a manes, and not as a human
being in the earth of time. The
secret of the whole matter is that
in both the Old and the New
Testaments the mysteries of Amenta
have been literalized and shifted
to the human dwelling-place, and the
readers have been left groping
and wandering in the wrong world.
It
is the people of Israel who were in Sheol,
not in Palestine, that speak in the following
words of Hosea: “Come,
and let us
return unto the Lord (who is described in the preceding
chapter as the double lion); for he hath
torn and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and
he will bind us up. After
two days will
he revive us; on the third day he will raise us
up, and we shall live
before him.
And let us know, let us follow on to know the Lord.
His going forth is sure
as the morning;
and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter
rain that watereth
the earth” (Hos. vi. 1-3). These were
the people
of Israel who
suffered their
captivity in the prison-house of Amenta.
They have
suffered death
from the lion
god, who has
laid them low in Sheol, but will raise
them upon the third
day to live
with himself.
This was the captivity of Job the sufferer
from Satan
in Sheol, and
also the sufferer
in the Psalms whose soul is a prisoner
bound in Sheol, waiting
for deliverance
and for the
salvation that cometh out of
Zion (Ps.
xiv. and xvi.).
It is a captivity
that never
was historical, in a land of bondage
which may be called
Babylon, Egypt,
or Sodom;
but, as Hosea shows, it was a
bondage from
which the prisoners
were set free
after two days - that
is, in the resurrection on the
third day. A
knowledge of the matter at first hand
in the Egyptian rendering will disintegrate
the historical
captivity and exodus, leaving but
little to set foot upon beyond a heap
of ever-shifting sand.
In Alexandria, about the year 140
B.C., the Sibyl was giving forth her
oracles in a farrago of the
ancient wisdom, concerning an advent
of the righteous king who was to rise
up in the east, as all such
personages ever had done in the
solar mythos, and found his kingdom of
perpetual peace. The Jews
in Alexandria, being in subjection,
cultivated this idea, and did their utmost
to convert the
mythical Messiah into an ethnical
saviour. Their falsely-excited hopes,
however, ended in a few
desperate endeavours to fulfil
the supposed prophecies respecting a
political deliverer who should free
them from the Roman yoke. And the
same delusion, mainly born of misinterpreted
mythology, lived
on afterwards as Christian. More
especially after the alleged historic
fulfilment. It broke out
as a belief in the second advent
and the establishment of the millennium
which had not been historically
realized the first time. The
Christian opinion most prevalent for [Page 542] many
centuries was that the
Messiah would
come again,
like Arthur
and other Aeonian
heroes of the
astronomical mythology, and
that his kingdom was
to last one
thousand years.
After that the deluge,
or the dragon.
Christian Chiliasim
was unwittingly
founded on
the periodic
return of the ever-coming
one who had been Horus
or Іu the prince
of peace in
the “house
of a thousand
years”, an
earthly likeness
of which was
restored for
Amen of Nepata
by King Harsiatef
of the 26th
dynasty (Stele, Records of
the Past, vol.
vi. p. 85).
This ever-
recurring advent
was dated for
those who kept
the chronology,
but the ignorant
Christian Chiliasts
were left literally
dateless from
their lack
of the gnosis. That which
had been in
the astronomical
mythos was
yet to come
according to
the biblical
prophecies.
In the Kamite
eschatology
the mountain
of the Lord's house had been
established
at the summit
of Aarru-hetep,
the paradise of peace, the
country that
is called the “tip
of heaven” (Rit., ch. 99). The house
of the Lord
upon the mount
was the great
hall of judgment
called the
maat, from
which proceeded
the law and
the word of
the Lord and
the son of
God who came
to make the
word of the
Lord truth
against his
adversaries. But
in the latter
days it shall come to pass that the mountain of
the Lord's house
shall be established
in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted
above the hills; and peoples shall
flow unto it.
And many nations shall go and
say, Come ye,
and let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord, and
to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will
teach us of his ways, and we will
walk in his
paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And he shall
judge between many peoples, and shall rebuke
strong nations afar off: and they
shall beat
their swords into ploughshares, and their spears
into pruning-hooks; nation shall
not lift up
sword against nation, neither
shall they
learn war any more. They shall sit every man
under his vine
and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them
afraid; for the mouth of the Lord
of hosts hath
spoken it”,
“and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount
Zion from henceforth even for ever” (Micah, iv.
1-8). But whilst the prophet is apparently peering
forward into some indefinite future, he is only looking
into the camera obscura in front, which is all the
while reflecting things that lie behind him in a far-off
past. Ages on ages earlier the feast of fat things,
with the heaps of food, the thousands of geese and
ducks, the corn and beer in huge abundance, had been
spread in the Egyptian paradise for the eternal feast,
with Mount Hetep for the table. This was the heaven
of all good things that were imaged as provisions in
the land of promise that could not be attained in Jerusalem
below, but only at the summit of another life. This
was the mount of peace where the Lord of
all things rested, he whose
name was Neb-Hetep, the lord
of peace. That was
the land in
which there was no more night
and the tears
were wiped from all faces,
and pain
and sorrow ceased, and sighing
had for ever passed
away. A close acquaintance
with the Ritual shows that
the Ιus brought out of Egypt
certain writings that contained
the Egyptian
eschatology, the wisdom in
which they tell us
their giver of the law was
learned. That wisdom of the
other world was converted
into history
for this, and all turned topsy-turvy
by changing
the earth of (Page 543) eternity
into the earth
of time and the manes
into mortals. In this way
the noble, full, flowing
river of old
Egypt's wisdom ended in
a quagmire of prophecies
for the Jews and a dried-up
wilderness
of desert sands for the
Christians. And on those
shifting sands the
historic “Christians
reared their
temple of the eternal,
which is giving way at
last because it was not
founded on
the solid rock, and
because no amount of blood
would ever suffice to solidify
the sand or
form a concrete foundation
or even a buttress for
the crumbling building.
The
secret of the ancientness and sanctity of
the writings is that they were originally Egyptian,
like the Jewish community.
They are not
the product of any ground-rootage in the land
of Judea. They come to us masked and in disguise.
The wisdom of old, the
myths, parables, and
dark sayings that were preserved, have been presented
to us dreadfully defeatured
and deformed
in the course of being converted into history.
An exoteric rendering has taken the
place of the esoteric representation which contained
the only true interpretation.
The past was
known to Philo, the learned Jew, who when speaking
of the Mosaic writings
told his countrymen
that “the literal
statement is
a fabulous one, and it is in the mythical that
we shall find the true”. To
understand
their own books, their religious rites, festivals,
and ceremonies, the Jews
will have to
go back to Egypt for the purpose of comparison.
The Egyptian Ritual will show
them why their
New Year's Day is the annual judgment day,
the great day of doom; and
why it is also
the great day of memorial “for
celebrating
the creation
of the world, as it was in Egypt. Their
“great day of
atonement” is identical
with that on which the Sut-Typhonians
and adversaries
of Osiris were
slain in a
bloody sacrifice
that was offered
up as pleasing
to the Good
Being, Un-Nefer,
who was annually
put to death
by these emissaries
of the evil
one and annually
avenged by
Har-Tema and
his faithful followers.
The blowing
of the trumpet,
or Shofar,
is the signal
for the resurrection from Amenta, or
Sheol, and
has been so
since the vernal
equinox entered
and the solar
resurrection
occurred in
the sign of
the Ram, 4,300
years ago,
to say nothing
of the earlier
stations in
precession.
The Rabbins
have preserved
the tradition
that the dead
are summoned
before the divine tribunal
to be judged
upon the day
of doom, which
occurs each
New Year's
Day.
Gleams of the ancient
glory are afloat
in Jewish eyes
that still
turn Zionward,
still mistaking
the earthly for
the heavenly
vision of the
eternal city,
a promised
land in Palestine
for a celestial
locality
that is
still en
l'air or in
the clouds
of prophecy. If
they were to
see the promised
land in Palestine
to-day, they
would not find
the eternal
city of their
dreams at Jerusalem
any more than
at Rome or
Thebes, at
Memphis, at
Annu, or any
other foundation
upon which the celestial
home of rest
was portrayed
in heaven or
localized in
a pattern on this earth.
On the other
hand, the Jews in their religious mysteries
go
back to Jerusalem
once every
year; and once
a year Messiah
comes to them,
from generation
to generation
as “the persistent
traveller upon
heaven's highways,
who steppeth onwards through
eternity” (Rit., ch.
42). The yearning
for Zion by
these homeless
lodgers who
[Page 544] are aliens
in all lands
did not arise
from love of
country or
desire to cultivate
its soil. It
originated in religious feeling and
the following
of a heavenly
mirage that
could be pursued
over all the
earth and its
deserts, independently
of locality or of race.
This view is
also enforced
by the persistence
of the Messianic
craze that
yet survives
amongst the Jewish victims of misinterpreted
mythology, who still await that
fulfilment of the impossible
which the persecuting Christians
fatuously suppose they have secured
for all time and for eternity.
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