Works on Egyptian Religion
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Hello everyone,
I was hoping someone a little more experienced might be able to make a few suggestions about works on Egyptian religion. My objectives are: first is have a good grasp and foundation with the gods and mythology to understand the Golden Dawn's (for instance the initiation rituals) and Crowley's use of them. Perhaps a work on Egyptian magic might also be helpful. My second objective is to get a firm enough background to read the Book of the Dead (I've been trying, it's hard, but I can <i>feel</i> the depth of these rituals and writings, but can't quite get an intellectual grasp on them...
So what I'm looking for is maybe a suggestion of two or three books.Thanks!
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Egyptology has evolved enormously in the last 100+ years. There is a certain Tornado around this forum that is far more knowledgeable about it than am I.
But, since you specifically want to understand the GD and AC usages, you should consult references from the same era. For the purpose you state, it would be less useful for you to get the most recent and accurate information, than to get the (known to be somewhat - or a lot! - wrong) info that GD and AC relied on.
In this, I don't think yo ucan do better than Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians. Also, the Praemonstrator of the GD temple into which AC was initiated was Florence Farr. Her Egyptian Magic addresses what you're asking about.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"a certain Tornado"
I am suspicious of Budge’s translation of the Book of the Dead, but Crowley probably used him as a source. Egyptology is an exciting and advancing field. Only yesterday I was examining Joseph Smith’s egregious “translation” of the J.S. Smith Papyrus against what is common knowledge in Egyptology today – even sadder were the attempts by LDS scholars to explain away the mistakes of their Prophet:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham
I recommend Erik Hornung and Alexander Piankoff – although the latter is hard to find. I don’t know much about the GD, but my understanding of Crowley and the Cairo Working were greatly enhanced by studying the concept of the solar evolution, the horizons, the spells of the dead, the significance of voice, the psychostasis and 42 Negative Confessions.
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Thanks Jim and Atlas Itch. I was nervous about having to read Budge. I guess I was hoping I could avoid having to choose between getting background for the texts I'm reading and accuracy. Ah well...
I guess the bigger question this raises is what to do with rituals and other material based on information we now know is false. Do we try to correct the texts? does it matter? what sort of responsibility do we have to the Egyptian religion? etc., etc.
I'd be interested to know how others have approached this problem.
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@Frater D.T.V. said
"what sort of responsibility do we have to the Egyptian religion?"
None at all.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Frater D.T.V. said
"what sort of responsibility do we have to the Egyptian religion?"None at all."
So, Jim, is Thelema at all an "adaptation" of Egyptian religion? Or is the use of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses in the Thelemic pantheon just a convenient way to organize and classify those divine attributes which they represent?"
I call it "Egyptoid," i.e., Sorta-Kinda-Egyptian-like.
I regard it as something entirely new - that incidentally uses Egyptian-derived elements in new ways.
"The latter makes more sense to me, but with Crowley's belief that he was the reincarnation of "the self-slain Ankh-af-na-Khonsu," could it be that he was - for lack of better words - the modern-day Prophet whose will it was to resurrect the Egyptian religion, more or less?"
I've never thought of it that way. (Sounds very Giordano Bruno.)
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@he atlas itch said
"I am suspicious of Budge’s translation of the Book of the Dead"
As am I. It is obvious that he had little sympathy with what he was translating, and went about it with the single-minded stupidity of a pedant. The Budge translation simply doesn't read well; it is utterly cold and literal. Yet it is the least bastardized translation we have, at the moment, and is probably the cleanest source for information on Ancient Egyptian ritual, etc. Still, something smells funny if you ask me...it's rather like he did a mix and match of various texts, and presented us with a sort of Egypto-fruit salad.
If anybody knows of a better translation I'd be more than interested.
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The R.O. Faulkner translation of the Book of the Dead is supposed to more accurate from what I've heard.
I disagree that the Egyptian aspect is irrelevant to Thelema. One must ponder why Crowley received Liber Al in Cairo as opposed to, say, an ancient center of Kabbalistic studies such as Safed, Israel. If True Will takes into consideration all the aspects of a person's environment into which he or she incarnates, then by analogy there must be something very important and unique about Cairo and its Egyptian legacy that gave birth to Liber Al. There is an extensive thread over at Lashtal.com titled "The Stele of Revealing" that examines the Egyptological elements in the Stele and how it relates to our understanding of the New Aeon. There is also a thread on this forum titled "Thoughts on Liber Resh" that looks this ritual from the point of view of Egyptology.
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The point many seem to be missing here is that the original question isn't served by accurate Egyptological information. He wanted to know how the GD and Crowley used these things. So you need the stuff that's somewhat wrong, but that is exactly what they had access to.
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Let’s retrace the Cairo Working.
The number 666 on the Stele catches Crowley’s attention and sets things in motion, leading him to identify with Ankh-f-na-Khonsu. He notes in his magickal record leading up to April 8th, “Now 666=My name, the number of the stele, the number of The Beast (See Apocalypse), the number of the Man.” He further notes the GD ritual of the Equinox and that “I am to formulate a new link of an Order with the Solar Force”.
He produces a poetic paraphrase of the Stele in the days before the reception of Liber Al and the following lines on the reverse of the Stele are, well, revealing. We know Crowley’s mother used to call him “the beast” as a child and thereafter he identified with The Great Beast 666:
O heart of me, heart of my mother!
O heart which I had upon earth!
Stand not thou up against me as a witness!
Oppose me not, judge, in my quest!
Accuse me not now of unfitness.
Before the Great God, the dread Lord of the West!
For I fastened the one to the other
With a spell for their mystical girthThe appeal to the mother to not stand against the speaker and judge him, which is a fairly common invocation in Egyptian mortuary spells, reveals something hidden within Crowley in relation to his mother and his identity as the Great Beast 666, further forging his identification with the Egyptian priest. The speaker is about to perform an immense task. He faces the Lord of the West (Osiris) and fastens the “one to the other” with a spell for their mystical girth. The lines echo the GD ritual of the Equinox where the Hierophant for the Old Aeon, Osiris, gives up his throne in the West to the Hierophant for the New Aeon, Horus, who takes up the throne in the East.
This is where Egyptology is useful in understanding the Equinox of the Gods. The Lord of the West (Osiris) = sunset. The Old Aeon was oriented toward death. The Lord of the East (Horus) = sunrise. The New Aeon is oriented toward birth. Sunset and sunrise look identical, but a 180 degree reorientation is required to understand the New Aeon. When chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead says:
Yesterday belongs to me and I know tomorrow
Who is this?
Yesterday is Osiris, tomorrow is Rathe phrase “yesterday is Osiris” signifies the speaker has left death behind and now travels toward Ra – and its useful to remember the actual name of the Book of the Dead is Pert Em Heru, the Book of Coming Forth by Day.
The Egyptian symbolism of the above implies a radical reassessment of the present. Now what is curious is that the Stele refers to the “dead man Ankh-f-na-Khonsu” which, given the fact that the Stele is a mortuary artifact, is a redundancy. Note Liber Al refers to the “self-slain Ankh-f-na-Khonsu”. Unless one regards the Stele as a suicide note, which is unlikely, there is clearly a doubling of death going on here. None of this symbolism makes any sense until the significance of sunset and sunrise is understood and how one is oriented in relation to them. But it is useful to remember Horus is the principle of resurrection and dawning sun.
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Reading Massey and Budge is great when reading next to the western esoteric material written on the egyptian tradition as it for instance has evolved in the Golden Dawn and Crowleys system.
This is not however up to date information on the current position of the academia.
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Certainly not.
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@he atlas itch said
"a radical reassessment of the present"
Lest anyone think I am giving my own interpretation to the Cairo Working, Crowley’s comments on Atu XVI The Tower (or War) and Atu XX The Aeon (or Last Judgement) confirm this Egyptian reading. His words indicate the mind-staggering revelation he received in 1904.
The traditional reading of The Tower is catastrophe, ruins or a radical change in long-held understanding:
The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. It may be taken as the preface to Atu XX, the Last Judgement, i.e., the Coming of the New Aeon.
The opening of the Eye of Horus/Shiva destroys the Old Aeon universe:
*Shiva is represented as dancing upon the bodies of his devotees. To understand this is not easy for most western minds. Briefly, the doctrine is that the ultimate reality (which is Perfection) is Nothingness. Hence all manifestations, however glorious, however delightful, are stains. To obtain perfection, all existing things must be annihilated. The destruction of the garrison may therefore be taken to mean their emancipation from the prison of organized life, which was confining them. It was their unwisdom to cling to it…
This Trump is not the only card in the Pack, nor are the “will to live” and the “will to die” incompatible. This becomes clear as soon as life and death are understood (see Atu XIII) to be phases of a single manifestation of energy. *
It’s interesting that Crowley considered the identification to matter and the annihilation of it, leading to emancipation from prison, to be nothing less than a War.
He writes on Atu XX The Aeon:
*The old card was called The Angel: or, The Last Judgement. It represented an Angel or Messenger blowing a trumpet, attached to which was a flag, bearing the symbol of the Aeon of Osiris. Below him the graves were opening up, the dead rising up…The card therefore represented the destruction of the world by Fire. This was accomplished in the year of the vulgar era 1904, when the fiery god Horus took the place of the airy god Osiris in the East as Hierophant (see Atu V).
*