 |
The holy land of Egypt and its initiates
|
|
|
|
THE HOLY LAND OF EGYPT AND ITS INITIATES
The Holy Land of those who had gone out from the body, watered by the Celestial Nile, the River of Heaven, of which the earthly river was a symbol and parallel, was divided into three regions, or states: (1) Rusta, the Territory of Initiation; (2) Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination; and (3) Amenti, the Place of Union with the Unseen Father. 2
“In the religion of Egypt, the deepest and most fascinating mystery of antiquity, the visible creation, was conceived as the counterpart of the unseen world. 3 And the substance consisted not of a mere vague belief in the life beyond the grave, but in tracing out the Path whereby the Just, when the portal of the tomb is lifted up, 4 passes through the successive stages of
p. 71
[paragraph continues] Initiation, of Illumination, and of Perfection, necessary to fit him for an endless union with Light, the Great Creator. ” 1
Thus we are told that at a certain point in Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination, the Osirified, the purified soul, has achieved the “Passage of the Sun”—that is to say, has passed beyond the mortal mind-plane; he opens the Gates of the Celestial Nile and receives the Atf-crown of Illumination, “fashioned after the form of the Zodiacal light, the glory of the supreme heaven. ” This is presumably the “crown of lives” referred to in our sermons, which he receives in the sphere called “Eight, ” and with which he goes to the Father.
The Guide and Conductor through all these grades was Thoth the Eternal Wisdom; 2 and we are told that:
THOTH THE INITIATOR
“Thoth the Divine Wisdom, clothes the spirit of the Justified 3 a million times in a garment of true linen, 4 of
p. 72
that substance, that is to say, which by its purity and its brilliancy reminds us of the mantles, woven out of rays of light, wherewith the sun enwraps the earth afresh each day as she rotates before him; just as the soul of man is invested with new radiance each time that he turns to the presence of his Creator. ” Again, “in the harmonious proportion of the universe, ” the Egyptians saw “the Eternal Wisdom, Thoth, ‘the Mind and Will of God. ’” 1
We have seen that Pietschmann considers the original of Thoth, the God of Wisdom, to be nothing more than the ibis-headed moon-god, thus intentionally deriving the origin of the Great Initiator from what he considers to be the crude beginnings of primitive ideas. But Thoth was the Great Reckoner, the Recorder of the Balance of Justice, the Teller of the Kā rmic Scales. Now the mortal time-recorder for the Egyptians was the moon, “for if we consider the motion of the moon relatively to the sun, we shall find that the time that it takes in covering a space equal to its own disc is just an hour. . . . Now, that measure of the ‘Hour’ was peculiarly sacred in Egypt; each of the twenty-four which elapse during a single rotation of the earth being consecrated to its own particular deity, twelve of light and twelve of darkness. ‘Explain the God in the hour, ’ is the demand made of the adept in the Ritual when standing in the Hall of Truth. And that God in the hour, we learn, was Thoth, the ‘Lord of the Moon and the Reckoner of the Universe. ’” 2
|
|
|
Again, with regard to the moon-phases, the first day of the lunar month was called “the conception of the moon, ” the second its “birth, ” and so on step by step till it was full. Now the time of all lower initiations was the full moon. Thus “in the lunar representations
p. 73
on the walls of the temple of Denderah we have fourteen steps leading up to the fifteenth or highest, whereon was enthroned Thoth, the Lord of the Moon. ” 1
For some such reasons was Thoth called Lord of the Moon, not that the moon gave birth to the idea of Thoth. We must not seek for the origin of the Wisdom-tradition in its lower symbols. For in the inscription on the coffin of Ankhnes-Ra-Neferab—that is of her “whose life was the Sacred Heart of Ra”—we read: “Thy name is the Moon, the Heart of Silence, the Lord of the Unseen World” 2—of the space “as far as the moon, ” or the “sublunary region, ” as the old books say, the first after-death state, where souls are purified from earthly stains.
SOME OF THE DOCTRINES OF INITIATION
The end set before the neophyte was illumination, and the whole cult and discipline and doctrines insisted on this one way to Wisdom. The religion of Egypt was essentially the Religion of the Light.
But “most characteristic of all was the omnipotent and all-dominating sense of the fatherhood of God, producing the familiar and in some respects even joyous aspect which the Egyptians imparted to the idea of death. ” And “to the sense which the priests at least possessed, both of the divine personality and of their own ultimate union with the personal deity [the Logos], far more probably than to any artificial pretension to a supposed exclusiveness, may be ascribed the mystery enshrouding their religion. ” 3
And as Light was the Father of the Religion of Illumination, so was Life, his consort or syzygy, the Mother of the Religion of Joy. “Life was the centre,
p. 74
the circumference, the totality of Good. Life was the sceptre in the hand of Amen; life was the richest ‘gift of Osiris. ’ ‘Be not ungrateful to thy Creator, ’ says the sage Ptah-Hotep, in what is perhaps the oldest document in existence, ‘for he has given thee life. ’ ‘I am the Fount of Light, ’ says the Creator in the Ritual. ‘I pierce the Darkness. I make clear the Path for all; the Lord of Joy. ’” 1 Or again, as the postulant prays to the setting sun: “O height of Love, thou openest the double gate of the Horizon. ” 2
Here we have the full doctrine of the Light and Life which is the keynote of our treatises. Again, the doctrine of the endless turning of the spheres, which “end where they begin, ” in the words of “The Shepherd, ” is shown in the great fourth year festival of Hep-Tep or “Completion-Beginning, ” when “the revolution and the rotation of our planet were simultaneously completed and begun afresh. ” 3
|
|
|
