Gods of the 4th Aeon
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I find it interesting that the progression of the Aeons, from a Thelemic perspective, is...
Female (Isis)
Male (Osiris)
(Androgynous/double-aspect) Male (Horus)
Female (Maat).It's a swing from female to male, and back to female.
Does Maat have any androgynous elements or anything else that would be important in understanding Her?
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@Ash said
"Does Maat have any androgynous elements or anything else that would be important in understanding Her?"
As gods go, there's nothing inherently androgynous about her. For example, she's distinctly the female aspect (i.e., consort) of Thoth. You can learn a lot about her historically from Budge, who (despite some of his shortcomings, goes into much more depth on her and her origins than you're likely to find anywhere else).
As for Maat as Lady of the New Aeon, I don't think the species will really be able to understand what that's all about until we're more or less on top of it. For one thing (if my understanding of the nature of these aeons is correct), we'll be starting with a baseline of the species operating essentially from Neshamah. Whatever emerges next will build on that distinctive foundation.
I've had what will purportedly be the Word of Her Aeon communicated to me. I don't disclose it because (1) it might be all wrong despite my confidence in the source, (2) circumstances all could change, meaning that necessities would change, before we're there, and (3) since it's probably thousands of years away, the discussion would be purely theoretical, and I find theoretical discussions less and less helpful as the years go by
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What will be spiritual standarts in the aeon of maat?
And how will humanity look like then? -
@Vadox said
"What will be spiritual standarts in the aeon of maat?
And how will humanity look like then?"I doubt that we'll fully know until we're close to it - quite a few centuries from now.
And, of course, that has a lot to do with how we handle the time between now and then - in THIS stage.
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NEMA (in her book Maat Magick and elsewhere) claims--if I'm remembering correctly--that the word of the next Aeon will be IPSOS. Her vision has a lot to do with a shift of focus from the individual in the current Aeon to the collective in the coming one. The image of the bee (representing a kind of group mind, I take it) appears frequently in Liber Pennae Penumbra, which she claims is a received text.
I rather like her work (even if there is, perhaps, a bit too much Grant for my taste), but I doubt that she's done more than connect with the godform of Maat in the current Aeon, and the whole "double current" idea is rather ridiculous as far as I can tell. As we discussed on another thread somewhere, Maat is the Hierus of this Aeon, and thus could reasonably be involved in the current spiritual state of the human race, though not as markedly as Horus, of course.
Jim, do you (or anyone else) have an opinion on her work and its relation to the current or upcoming Aeon?
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@Iamus said
"Jim, do you (or anyone else) have an opinion on her work and its relation to the current or upcoming Aeon?"
I have always found it to be the best policy not to comment on this part of her work.
Either (1) she is far beyond me in sight, and I have no capacity to understand her or see the wisdom of what she has delivered, or (2) it's, at best, personal to her and has no general relevance. Either option is possible. (It's been decades since I looked at her Liber P.P.)
This is quite separate from my view that she has done noble service by the excitement and energy stirred around her in the Ohio area and beyond. That's of high value on its own, and has done much good.
Taking your summation above alone, I see a serious flaw. The flaw is based on the interpretation that the Horus Aeon is about individuality. That's actually the evolutionary step of the the Osiris Aeon: ego differentiation from the collective and movement to personal freedom. It seems to appear so prominently in this early part of the Horus Aeon because we're seeing the fruit of being (as a species) "Osiris graduates." That is (as a species), we get an A in Ego Emergence. The current Aeon of the Child is neither about the interdependent-connection of Isis alone, nor about the independent-distinguished of Osiris alone, but about their marriage: Individual existing inseparable from context and connection, Hadit existing as a point that is still part of the infinite space that is Nuit, one star within the company of heavens, etc.
This is what, as a movement (or whatever), we don't generally have right yet.
Nema gets enormous credit for drawing in the complementation of connecton-community. However she can pull that off, I'm for it!
I think the error is in presuming that this isn't a faculty or function of the present aeon. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"Taking your summation above alone, I see a serious flaw. The flaw is based on the interpretation that the Horus Aeon is about individuality. That's actually the evolutionary step of the the Osiris Aeon: ego differentiation from the collective and movement to personal freedom. It seems to appear so prominently in this early part of the Horus Aeon because we're seeing the fruit of being (as a species) "Osiris graduates." That is (as a species), we get an A in Ego Emergence. The current Aeon of the Child is neither about the interdependent-connection of Isis alone, nor about the independent-distinguished of Osiris alone, but about their marriage: Individual existing inseparable from context and connection, Hadit existing as a point that is still part of the infinite space that is Nuit, one star within the company of heavens, etc."
Hmm, the way I'd always looked at it is that in the Aeon of Isis the individual was not differentiated from the All. Then in the Aeon of Osiris the individual was subervient to the All and was often required to engage in self-sacrifice for its benefit. Now in the Aeon of Horus each individual is recognized as a particularized, but perfect manifestation of the All. I've always seen that as the marriage of the two Aeons in a dialectical sense in which the Aeon of Horus reveals the identity between the All and the individual--and thus, in dialectical fashion, preserving the truth of the previous Aeons. From that standpoint NEMA seems to conceive the Aeon of Maat as being like the Aeon of Isis but on a higher octave, so to speak. -
See my article on the aeons that's around here somewhere (and, better developed, in the early chapters of Visions & Voices. (I'm answering this from my phone.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"See my article on the aeons that's around here somewhere (and, better developed, in the early chapters of Visions & Voices. (I'm answering this from my phone.)"
Will do. I have V & V (clever cover, by the way), but haven't read it yet.
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Read Chapter 2 - from the beginning preferably or, at least, from p. 28.