great shining egg, and this was
Re."
--------------------------------------------------
In the beginning, before there was any
land of Egypt, all was darkness, and
there was
nothing but a great waste of water
called Nun.
The power of Nun was such that there
arose out
of the darkness a great shining egg, and
this
was Re.
Now Re was all-powerful, and he could
take many forms. His power and the
secret of it
lay in his hidden name; but if he spoke
other
names, that which he named came into
being.
"I am Khepera at the dawn, and Re at
noon, and Tem in the evening," he
said. And the
sun rose and passed across the sky and
set for
the first time.
Then he named Shu, and the first winds
blew; he named Tefnut the spitter, and
the
first rain fell. Next he named Geb, and
the
earth came into being; he named the
goddess
Nut, and she was the sky arched over the
earth
with her feet on one horizon and her
hands on
the other; he named Hapi, and the great
River
Nile flowed through Egypt and made it
fruitful.
After this Re named all things that are
upon the earth, and they grew. Last of
all he
named mankind, and there were men and
women in
the land of Egypt.
Then Re took on the shape of a man and
became the first Pharaoh, ruling over
the whole
country for thousands and thousands of
years,
and giving such harvests that for ever
afterwards the Egyptians spoke of the
good
things "which happened in the time
of Re".
But, being in the form of a man, Re grew
old. In time men no longer feared him or
obeyed
his laws. They laughed at him, saying:
"Look at
Re! His bones are like silver, his flesh
like
gold, his hair is the colour of lapis
lazuli!"
Re was angry when he heard this, and he
was more angry still at the evil deeds
which
men were doing in disobedience to his
laws. So
he called together the gods whom he had
made -
Shu and Tefnut and Geb and Nut - and he
also
summoned Nun. Soon the gods gathered
about Re
in his Secret Place, and the goddesses
also.
But mankind knew nothing of what was
happening,
and continued to jeer at Re and to break
his
commandments. Then Re spoke to Nun
before the
assembled gods: "Eldest of the
gods, you who
made me; and you gods whom I have made:
look
upon mankind who came into being at a
glance of
my Eye. See how men plot against me;
hear what
they say of me; tell me what I should do
to
them. For I will not destroy mankind
until I
have heard what you advise."
Then Nun said: "My son Re, the god
greater than he who made him and
mightier than
those whom he has created, turn your
mighty Eye
upon them and send destruction upon them
in the
form of your daughter, the goddess
Sekhmet."
Re answered: "Even now fear is falling
upon them and they are fleeing into the
desert
and hiding themselves in the mountains
in
terror at the sound of my voice."
"Send against them the glance of your Eye
in the form Sekhmet!" cried all the
other gods
and goddesses, bowing before Re until
their
foreheads touched the ground.
------------------------------------------------
"...and her chief
delight was in
slaughter, and her pleasure was in
blood."
-------------------------------------------------
So at the terrible glance from the Eye of
Re his daughter Sekhmet came into being,
the
fiercest of all goddesses. Like a lion
she
rushed upon her prey, and her chief
delight was
in slaughter, and her pleasure was in
blood. At
the bidding of Re she came into Upper
and Lower
Egypt to slay those who had scorned and
disobeyed him: she killed them among the
mountains which lie on either side of
the Nile,
and down beside the river, and in the
burning
deserts. All whom she saw she slew,
rejoicing
in slaughter and the taste of blood.
Presently Re looked out over the land and
saw what Sekhmet had done. Then he
called to
her, saying: "Come, my daughter,
and tell me
how you have obeyed my commands."
Sekhmet answered with the terrible voice
of a lioness as she tears her prey:
"By the
life which you have given me, I have
indeed
done vengeance on mankind, and my heart
rejoices."
Now for many nights the Nile ran red with
blood, and Sekhmet's feet were red as
she went
hither and thither through all the land
of
Egypt slaying and slaying.
Presently Re looked out over the earth
once more, and now his heart was stirred
with
pity for men, even though they had rebelled
against him. But none could stop the
cruel
goddess Sekhmet, not even Re himself:
she must
cease from slaying of her own accord
-and Re
saw that this could only come about
through
cunning.
So he gave his command: "Bring before me
swift messengers who will run upon the
earth as
silently as shadows and with the speed
of the
storm winds." When these were
brought he said
to them: "Go as fast as you can up
the Nile to
where it flows fiercely over the rocks
and
among the islands of the First Cataract;
go to
the isle that is called Elephantine and
bring
from it a great store of the red ochre
which is
to be found there."
The messengers sped on their way and
returned with the blood-red ochre to
Heliopolis, the city of Re where stand
the
stone obelisks with points of gold that
are
like fingers pointing to the sun. It was
night
when they came to the city, but all day
the
women of Heliopolis had been brewing
beer as Re
bade them.
Re came to where the beer stood waiting
in seven thousand jars, and the gods
came with
him to see how by his wisdom he would
save
mankind.
"Mingle the red ochre of Elephantine with
the barley-beer," said Re, and it
was done, so
that the beer gleamed red in the
moonlight like
the blood of men.
"Now take it to the place where Sekhmet
proposes to slay men when the sun
rises," said
Re. And while it was still night the
seven
thousand jars of beer were taken and
poured out
over the fields so that the ground was
covered
to the depth of nine inches -- three
times the
measure of the palm of a man's hand-with
the
strong beer, whose other name is
"sleep-maker".
When day came Sekhmet the terrible came
also, licking her lips at the thought of
the
men whom she would slay. She found the
place
flooded and no living creature in sight;
but
she saw the beer which was the colour of
blood,
and she thought it was blood indeed --
the
blood of those whom she had slain.
Then she laughed with joy, and her
laughter was like the roar of a lioness
hungry
for the kill. Thinking that it was
indeed
blood, she stooped and drank. Again and
yet
again she drank, laughing with delight;
and the
strength of the beer mounted to her
brain, so
that she could no longer slay.
At last she came reeling back to where Re
was waiting; that day she had not killed
even a
single man.
Then Re said: "You come in peace, sweet
one." And her name was changed to
Hathor, and
her nature was changed also to the
sweetness of
love and the strength of desire. And
henceforth
Hathor laid low men and women only with
the
great power of love. But for ever after
her
priestesses drank in her honour of the
beer of
Heliopolis coloured with the red ochre
of
Elephantine when they celebrated her
festival
each New Year.
So mankind was saved, and Re continued to
rule old though he was. But the time was
drawing near when he must leave the earth
to
reign for ever in the heavens, letting
the
younger gods rule in his place. For
dwelling in
the form of a man, of a Pharaoh of
Egypt, Re
was losing his wisdom; yet he continued
to
reign, and no one could take his power
from
him, since that power dwelt in his
secret name
which none knew but himself. If only
anyone
could discover his Name of Power, Re
would
reign no longer on earth; but only by
magic
arts was this possible.
Geb and Nut had children: these were the
younger gods whose day had come to rule,
and
their names were Osiris and Isis,
Nephthys and
Seth. Of these Isis was the wisest: she
was
cleverer than a million men, her
knowledge was
greater than that of a million of the
noble
dead. She knew all things in heaven and
earth,
except only for the Secret Name of Re,
and that
she now set herself to learn by guile.
Now Re was growing older every day. As he
passed across the land of Egypt his head
shook
from side to side with age, his jaw
trembled,
and he dribbled at the mouth as do the
very old
among men. As his spittle fell upon the
ground
it made mud, and this Isis took in her
hands
and kneaded together as if it had been
dough.
Then she formed it into the shape of a
serpent,
making the first cobra -- the uraeus,
which
ever after was the symbol of royalty
worn by
Pharaoh and his queen.
-------------------------------------------------
"...the venom of its
bite coursed
through his veins..."
-------------------------------------------------
Isis placed the first cobra in the dust
of the road by which Re passed each day
as he
went through his two kingdoms of Upper
and
Lower Egypt. As Re passed by the cobra
bit him
and then vanished into the grass. But
the venom
of its bite coursed through his veins,
and for
a while Re was speechless, save for one
great
cry of pain which rang across the earth
from
the eastern to the western horizon. The
gods
who followed him crowded round, asking:
"What
is it? What ails you?" But he could
find no
words; his lips trembled and he
shuddered in
all his limbs, while the poison spread
over his
body as the Nile spreads over Egypt at
the
inundation. When at last he could speak,
Re
said: "Help me, you whom I have
made. Something
has hurt me, and I do not know what it
is. I
created all things, yet this thing I did
not
make. It is a pain such as I have never
known
before, and no other pain is equal to
it. Yet
who can hurt me?-for none knows my
Secret Name
which is hidden in my heart, giving me
all
power and guarding me against the magic
of both
wizard and witch. Nevertheless as I
passed
through the world which I have created,
through
the two lands that are my special care,
something stung me. It is like fire, yet
is not
fire; it is like water and not water. I
burn
and I shiver, while all my limbs
tremble. So
call before me all the gods who have
skill in
healing and knowledge of magic, and
wisdom that
reaches to the heavens."
Then all the gods came to Re, weeping and
lamenting at the terrible thing which
had
befallen him. With them came Isis, the
healer,
the queen of magic, who breathes the breath
of
life and knows words to revive those who
are
dying. And she said:
"What is it, divine father? Has a snake
bitten you. Has a creature of your own
creating
lifted up its head against you? I will
drive it
out by the magic that is mine, and make
it
tremble and fall down before your
glory."
"I went by the usual way through my two
lands of Egypt," answered Re,
"for I wished to
look upon all that I had made. And as I
went I
was bitten by a snake which I did not
see -- a
snake that, I had not created. Now I
burn as if
with fire and shiver as if my veins were
filled
with water, and the sweat runs down my
face it
runs down the faces of men on the
hottest days
of summer."
"Tell me your Secret Name." said Isis
in
a sweet, soothing voice. "Tell it
me, divine
father; for only by speaking your name
in my
spells can I cure you."
Then Re spoke the many names that were
his: "I am Maker Heaven and
Earth." he said. "I
am Builder of the Mountains. I am Source
of the
Waters throughout all the world. I am
Light and
Darkness. I am Creator of the Great
River of
Egypt. I am the Kindler of the Fire that
burns
in the sky; yes, I am Khepera in the,
morning,
Re at the noontide, and Tum in the
evening."
But Isis said never a word, and the
poison had its way in the veins of Re.
For she
knew that he had told her only the names
which
all men knew, and that his Secret Name,
the
Name of Power, still lay hidden in his
heart.
At last she said: "You know well that the
name which I need to learn is not among
those
which you have spoken. Come, tell me the
Secret
Name; for if you do the poison will come
forth
and you will have an end of pain."
The poison burned with a great burning,
more powerful than any flame of fire,
and Re
cried out at last: "Let the Name of
Power pass
from my heart into the heart of Isis!
But
before it does, swear to me that you
will tell
it to no other save only the son whom
you will
have, whose name shall be Horus. And
bind him
first with such an oath that the name
will
remain with him and be passed on to no
other
gods or men."
Isis the great magician swore the oath,
and the knowledge of the Name of Power
passed
from the heart of Re into hers.
Then she said: "By the name which I know,
let the poison go from Re for
ever!"
So it passed from him and he had peace.
But he reigned upon earth no longer.
Instead he
took his place in the high heavens,
traveling
each day across the sky in the likeness
of the
sun itself, and by night crossing the
underworld of Amenti in the Boat of Re
and
passing through the twelve divisions of
Duat
where many dangers lurk. Yet Re passes
safely,
and with him he takes those souls of the
dead
who know all the charms and prayers and
words
that must be said. And so that a man
might not
go unprepared for his voyage in the Boat
of Re,
the Egyptians painted all the scenes of
that
journey on the walls of the tombs of the
Pharaohs, with all the knowledge that
was
written in The Book of the Dead, of
which a
copy was buried in the grave of lesser
men so
that they too might read and come safely
to the
land beyond the west where the dead
dwell.
All content and images © April McDevitt, 1997-2004, All Rights Reserved
Destruction of Humanity
---------------------------
Author: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sekhmetsden/
In
PerSeshen@yahoogrou
ps.com, "katnewkirk" wrote:
in: Pinch, Geraldine, _A Handbook of Egyptian Mythology_, ABC-CLIO,Inc. , Santa Barbara, CA, c. 2002, ISBN 1-57607-242- 8, (pp 74 -75)
------------------------------------------------------
After Ra had become the ruler of both gods and men,Humanity plotted against him, while his majesty, may he live,
may he prosper, may he be healthy, had grown old. His bones
became silver, his flesh became gold, his hair true lapis lazuli.
When his majesty saw how humanity was plotting against him,
his majesty said to his followers "summon for me, my Eye,
Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, and the father and mothers who were
with me when I was in the primeval waters, as well as the god
Nun. Let him bring his followers with him, but bring them
secretly in case the humans see and their hearts escape.
The
gods and goddesses all came and asked Ra to
speak. He told
them, "Humanity, which came into being from my Eye, is plotting
against me. Advise me what to do about it." Nun, and the other
deities advise Ra to send his Eye against the rebels. "No Eye is more
able to smite them. Let it go down as Hathor."
The guilty ones among humanity flee into the desert through fear of
Ra, but Hathor slaughters them and wades in their blood. When she
returns to Ra, she tells him that she has "overpowered humanity and
it was sweet to my heart." Ra replies, "I shall have power over them
as king by culling them." Thus, says the text, "the Powerful One came
into being."
The goddess intends to continue her slaughter the next day, but for
reasons that are not explained, Ra has changed his mind. He summons
messengers who can travel as fast as shadows and sends them to fetch
a large quantity of a red mineral. The he orders the Side-lock Wearer
in
Heliopolis, a title of the high priest of Ra,
to grind up the
mineral while his maid servants mash barley to make beer. They make
7,000 jars of beer and add the red mineral to it to make the beer
look like blood. Ra has the beer taken to the place where the goddess
plans to destroy humanity. Before dawn Ra pours the red beer out
until the fields are flooded to a depth of "three palms." When the
goddess arrives at dawn, she sees her own beautiful reflection in the
flood. "She drank and it delighted her heart. She came back drunk
without having noticed humanity." Ra welcomed her back and from that
day on alcohol was drunk during the festivals of Hathor.
It is not clear whether Ra took pity on humanity after the first
day's slaughter or whether he only wanted to save the portion of
humanity that he regarded as innocent. The latter is probably implied
by the fact that the people killed on the first day have fled to the
desert, part of the realm of chaos. These people became Enemies of
Ra, a group that is shown in the Underworld Books being horribly
tortured in the afterlife. The second day's slaughter is to take
place in fields, presumably in the agricultural land of the Nile
Valley, usually associated with the realm of order.
The
goddess Maat was sometimes said to have been
sent down to live
among humanity. She would stay with a virtuous person even after
their death, but in times of general disorder and strife she would
withdraw. Humanity was sometimes divided into the Followers of Horus
(good) and the Followers of Seth (bad). This division appears to
justify the ruthless destruction of many humans by the gods. A ritual
drama inscribed on the walls of the temple of Horus
of Edfu
describes a rebellion by the people of Nubia in the 363rd year of
Ra's reign. The rebels are tricked into killing each other, and their
leader, Seth, is beheaded. A myth in Papyrus Jumihac tells how the
goddess transforms herself into a form of Hathor, slaughters all the
Followers of Seth with her fire, and wades in their blood. This might
seem a direct borrowing from the Book of the Heavenly Cow, but it
should probably be seen as an example of a repeating pattern of
events.
In the Book of the Heavenly Cow, even though the rebels have been
defeated, the world can never be the same again. Ra announces that he
is sick and weary, and he cannot bear to remain on earth. Nun, the
god of the primeval waters, orders Shu and Nut to help Ra. Nut is
transformed into a cow, and Ra rides away on her back. As the earth
darkens, some of humanity beg Ra to stay, and they shoot at his
enemies. This, says the text, was how death came into being. From
this point on, humanity has to fight and die to maintain the
divine
order.
Nut carries Ra up into the heavens, and the single creator god
transforms into many heavenly bodies. He creates the fields of
paradise for the spirits of the dead. Nut "began to tremble because
of the height," so Ra creates the Heh gods who live in the twilight.
Shu and the Heh gods support the body of Nut. The Ra tells Geb to
warn the powerful serpents who live under the earth not to abuse
their magic because he will still look down on them. Ra puts Osiris
in charge of Humanity and calls "the moon of
Thoth"
into being, so
that Thoth can rule the night sky as his deputy. This begins the era
when the world was ruled by a series of lesser gods.
The first article which I want to share with you is the following written by Vincent Bridges. Please go to his site to read more.
http://vincentbridges.com/2006/03/29/the-path-of-ra/
In the theology of the priests of Heliopolis, we catch a glimpse of mankind’s earliest spiritual understanding of the nature of light. Those clever theologians managed to describe its relativistic quality — nothing with any matter at all can go faster than light — in terms of a mythological unity of great depth and philosophical complexity, the “operative and creative power” imagined by the Egyptians as the great god RA.
This powerful archetypal image was crafted by the rehket-sa, or “assembly of sages,” of Heliopolis, with the help of a group of beings known as the Henmemet, or “The Shining Ones.” From earliest times, (the spelling of the name of the city itself, Annu — a finned spear-head, a jar and the symbol for city — suggests the place where the space-ships land their cargo). Heliopolis seems to have been a very cosmopolitan place, one where several races and a few interplanetary species mingled freely. The spelling of the name Henmemet suggests a group of physical beings, definitely not spirits, who are “filled with light.” This phrase re-occurs as the priests of RA try to describe life for the departed believer in the Boat of a Million Years; in a sense, the followers of RA would become like the Henmemet and travel the stars fed and clothed with light. Perhaps it is these celestial voyagers who educated the sages of Annu in the arts of mathematics, geometry, physics, astronomy, and so on through the familiar list of the early dynasties’ unexpected sophistication. Wherever they learned or discovered the information, the priests of Annu were the first humans to code these physical constants, clues to the structure of the universe, into a mythical theology that is descriptive of the actual nature of both physical and psychological reality.
If we think of RA as the personification of all that we now call the nature of light, then his role as the original creative principle suddenly comes into sharp focus. Time, we are told, began with the first appearance of RA; eternity is referred to as “since the time of RA.” These are ideas that strongly suggest the role of light as the ultimate yardstick of the space/time continuum. Without the activity of photon binding and threshold kindling, our physical reality would not exist. It is the discontinuous nature of quantum events, the absorption and emission of photons, which creates this discreet and sentient existence. Therefore, RA, when understood as the nature of light, does creatively enact our world and all its parts.
The ancient Egyptians expressed this in the way they spelled the word, ra. The “r” sound is rendered as a mouth, or a vesica piscis and the “a” is the out-stretched hand symbol. The determinatives are: a sun symbol with a line to the ground and the seated god figure, which tells us that this ra is a god who localizes the energy of the sun, or great light. The phonetic symbols suggest, in hieroglyphic rebus fashion, that the waves give or supply the energy of the sun. The mouth of RA is a schematic for the sine wave of a vibrating string, and, as the vesica, generates the irrational number of the square root of 3. This number divides the volume-form of the cube (a cube with edges equal to 1; a rectangular plane is passed diagonally through the cube, the diagonal of which equals the square root of three) and, remember, every form in the created universe is a volume. Think of the square root of the as a form generator, regular polygons arising one after the other in the succession of vesica constructions unfolding from the self division of unity. This form-creating flow, the glyphs suggest,is the gift of the local energy source, the sun. This gift of form is the essence of what the Egyptian theologians considered divine. In that sense, RA was indisputably the One God, the unity at the heart of diversity.
Hang on to that realization. It is a clue to understanding the basic mysteries of Egyptian theology. The Followers of RA, like the Henmemet, who visited Heliopolis in the early dynastic era, were real people, not spirits. It is from them that the concept of “God the Principle,” the “RA Function” passed to the priests of the City of the Sun. The “Light Beings,” that is, creatures who are fed on, clothed by, and enveloped in light, naturally became the focus of the religious concept they taught. If we believe (as the early Egyptians thought) in the RA Function, the “One God who is All Gods,” then we will become like these light beings when we die. Like them, we will voyage forever in the Boat of a Million Years…
Beliefs like these were popular with the priests and the intellectuals, but the mass of Egyptian people never wavered from their faith in the shamanic paradise of Osiris, a vegetation god whose worship created a cult of the deified dead. If the RA function existed since the beginning of time, then the Osiris cult surely has its beginnings in the moment the first Handy monkey learned of death. The only god worthy of respect to that grieving monkey was one who could assuage the awful lonely emptiness of extinction. An afterlife of judgement and reward ensured that existence was continuous and that it had meaning, even if that meaning was judged as negative. Ausar Un-Nefer, Osiris the Justified One, filled the existential void of death with a panoply of shamanic ordeals and divine interaction. Life was anything but dull in the Hall of the Lord of the Dead.
The genius of the IVth Dynasty Heliopolitan theologians and social scientists lies in their creative resolution to the problem of these two contrasting afterlives. Ausar (Osiris) was invited into the Boat of a Million Years and was asked to sit at the right hand of RA. In fact, he was asked to be RA’s regent, his viceroy among the monkeys, as it were. The name, Ausar is spelled with the eye of RA above a throne, and the god figure as a determinative. His distinctive function, “stability,” symbolized by the backbone-like djed, was once, along with “light,” considered one of the powers of RA. Osiris worship, with its shamanic paradise, was thus elevated by its merger with the RA function to the level of an universal religion. As such it long out lasted the priests of RA, whose functions were usurped by Amun of Thebes. (Although a memorialized form of the ancient wisdom continued to be celebrated among the ruins of Heliopolis until the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century of the Common era.)
The union of these two god-forms produced the central mystery of the Egyptian religious experience. A line of the Vth Dynasty Pyramid Texts reads: “The Great Secret, The Great Mystery; it is RA, it is Osiris.” This could be interpreted as: “The Great Secret: we are of extra-terrestrial origin — The Great Mystery: we can return to that level of being; it is RA (who reveals the Great Secret), it is Osiris, (who shows us the Great Mystery).”
This blending of cosmological and metaphorical values supplied the inner tension that kept the Egyptian mysteries vital for over three thousand years. The path of RA offered a transcendentally cosmological existence in the boat of a million years, while the path of Osiris promised eternity in an astral metaphor for life along the Nile. We are told in the “Book of the Dead” that RA and Osiris are twin souls, united between the pillars of the Djed, but we are left with few clues as to how this unification was to be accomplished.
The clues that we do have (see discussions at Edfu and Letopolis) point to the agency of Heru-Ur, the elder sky god who somehow manages to be both cosmological and metaphorical and therefore acts as a medium for their unification. Strangely enough, the Neophyte Ritual of the nineteenth century magical group, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, suggests the same process by having the god-form of Heru-Ur (Aeouris) be the active or initiatory form of Osiris. In that same ritual, much is made of an Egyptian phrase, “Khabs m Pehket,” which is translated as “Light in Extension.” With this inspired choice, the Order penetrated to the core of the Egyptian mysteries.
The Egyptians had many words that meant “light,” showing a subtle and sophisticated understanding of both physics and optics by their varied spellings and usage. But one, the one used by the Order, had a very unusual series of meanings associated with it. Khabs in its root meanings suggests “to shine or sparkle like a star.” It can also mean the star itself, or any other celestial “lamp,” as in the “Lamps of the Decans.” This meaning of “lamplight” became a mystical phrase associated by the experience of being filled with light, as were the Henmemet. In this sense it passed into Islam as the 35th verse of the 24th sura of the Koran, becoming over time the focus of many Sufi sects, including the Al Hagag Sufis of the Temple Mosque at Luxor. Khabs implies the whole mystery of RA and “the Path of Becoming Light,” as pehket (the word translated as “extension” by the Golden Dawn), expresses the physically focused nature of the Osiris cult.
How these fragments of Heliopolitan wisdom found their way into a nineteenth century English magical society is quite another story, but their very survival indicates the deep archetypal power of these formulations. “Light in Extension” seems to be the key to activating the Equinox of the Gods, the Unification of the Paths of RA and Osiris, and the medium through which this will occur (is occurring!) seems to be that of the ancient God of the Sky, Heru-Ur. After all, March 21 in the Cairo calendar is called the “feast of Re-constituting Heaven: The Company of the Gods, union of the houses of RA, Ausar and Heru.”
© 1995 Vincent Bridges
