|
|
Life after death: The Egyptian After-Life
The Spiritual Bookstore Online World Religion Library
AFTER-LIFE EXISTENCE - AN OCCULT ANALYSIS
Chapter 2: The Egyptian After-Life
Multiple souls and multiple after-lives
"The dead man is at one and the same time in heaven, in the god's boat,
under the earth, tilling the Elysian fields, and in his tomb enjoying
his victuals"
The Great Egyptian Civilization
Of all the great Civilizations known at the present time, only ancient
Sumer, which developed in the Mesopotamian basin in the fourth century
before Christ, exceeds in age that of ancient Egypt.
Egyptian Civilization as it is known began when the King (or Pharaoh)
Menes unified the separate Upper and Lower Kingdoms along the Nile in
3100 B.C.E. Menes founded the first of thirty-one dynasties (this is the
traditional number, according to the enumeration of the late (4th
Century B.C.E.) Egyptian priest Manetho. The precise number of dynasties
- especially some of the minor ones - has however been disputed by
modern scholars) of an empire that was to last until Alexander the
Great's conquest in 332 B.C.E., a period longer than that of any other
known empire (see table 2-1).
From the sixth century before Christ onwards, during which time this
mighty Civilization had already been in decay for several centuries,
Egypt served as the source of spiritual and occult wisdom for the more
intellectually sophisticated world - the Greek Civilization of the
North-West Mediterranian - much as today the more sensitive people of
the materialistic and technological West look to India as the source of
spiritual nourishment. Philosophers, historians, and teachers -
Pythagoras, Herodotus, Plato, to name just the better-known - journeyed
there to learn the ancient wisdom and sciences, where they looked upon a
Civilization as ancient then as the Classical Greek and Roman period is
to us today, and returned to the Hellenic world with their knowledge.
But the knowledge we are concerned with here - gleaned from the
hieroglyphics of tombs and papyrii - dates from even before this period
of Greek contact; from the time when Egyptian Civilization was still at
its height. In a fertile strip of land barely 20 kilometres (12 miles)
at its widest, and 500 kilometres (300 miles) in length, nourished by
the waters and nutrients of the life-giving Nile, the Egyptians built
pyramids and temples to extraordinarily precise proportions - a
precision that would be remarkable even with today's technology - and
developed an incredibly sophisticated occult knowledge of the after-life
state.
It is indeed no exaggeration to say that no other Civilization devoted
as much care and attention to their dead as did the ancient Egyptians.
Their magnificent tombs, their elaborate funeral rites, their
painstaking mummification technology, and their voluminous literature
concerned with after-life existence, all stand as mute witness to this
fact.
The literature itself can be divided into three periods, according to
its mode of inscription. First were the Pyramid Texts (ca. 2500-2300
B.C.E.), so called because they were inscribed on the interior walls of
pyramids, which date to the fifth dynasty. Then came the Coffin or
Sarcophagus Texts (ca. 2300-2000 B.C.E.), of the sixth and the
succeeding short dynasties of the First Intermediate Period. Finally,
the great eighteenth dynasty, with which commenced the New Kingdom
period in the sixteenth century B.C.E., down to the end of the last
remnants of Egyptian Civilization in the early Christian era, Papyrus
scrolls were used, a copy of which was usually interred with the
deceased to guide him the after-life; these were the famous "books of
the dead". It should be pointed out that the title "Book of the Dead" is
a modern scholarly one; the actual title usually translates as something
like "Book of the Coming Forth into Day, to Live after Death".
For the earlier period of Egyptian Civilization, it was apparently
believed that only the Pharoah and his family continued after death, and
became gods. Hence the massive pyramids constructed during the fourth
and fifth dynasties. By the end of the Old Kingdom (sixth dynasty),
post-mortem existence had been expanded to include nobles as well.
Finally, with the cult of Osiris, the slain and resurrected god, and a
figure equivalent in many ways to the Christian Christ, which appeared
during the upheavals of the First Intermediate Period, the
democratisation of post-mortem existence was complete, and all were
assured of an after-life existence. During this period, the deceased
were first given the title "Osiris", a term which meant both the "soul"
or surviving consciousness principle, and simply the departed person,
like "the Late Mr Smith". Thus the custom-made "Book of the Dead"
papyrii address themselves to Osiris So and So (e.g. "Osiris Ani").
Egyptian After-Life Metaphysics: A Study In Obscurity
With all the attention they paid to after-life existence, one would
expect the Egyptian metaphysics to be clear and understandable. But
instead one finds a bewildering array of different psychic and spiritual
principles, each of which appeared to a have a separate existence after
death, and even during life. Just consider the following (brackets
describe the ideogram used):
KHAT or KHA - (a fish) - the physical body.
SAHU - (a mummy and a seal) - the "spiritual body"; a body which has
obtained a degree of knowledge and power and has thus become
incorruptible.
AB - (a vessel with ears as handles) - the "heart", the source of good
and bad thoughts; the moral awareness of right and wrong.
KA - (a pair of upraised arms) - the double, image,character,
disposition, or individual ego, which is created with, or even before,
the physical being. Originally the daimon or genius or spiritual double
of the pharaoh, which guided him in life and protected him in death; it
later became the human presence which remains in tomb, and partakes of
food and other funerary offerings.
BA - (a human-headed bird) - the "soul", which ascends to the
paradisical and the heavenly realms and enjoys an eternal existence
there, but can also return to the tomb and partake of the funerary
offerings.
KHAIBIT - (a fan; an object which intercepts the light) - the "shadow";
like the Ka and Ba it partakes of funerary offerings; and is able to
detach from the body. References to the Khaibit are infrequent, and the
meaning usually obscure.
AKH, KHU, or AKHU - (the ibis or phoenix) - the "spirit"; the radiant
shining one; the transfigured dead which ascends to heaven and dwells
among the gods, or among the immortal pole stars which never set.
SEKHEM - the power or form; generally the references are obscure.
REN - the "name", which exists in heaven. In any psychically (as opposed
to spiritually) based magical philosophy, to know the secret name of a
person or entity is to have power of that being.
This bewildering confusion prompted one despairing writer to complain:
"The precise meaning of ka, ba, ach (akh), `shm (sekhem), and so on is
no longer clear to us. Well-meaning scholars try again and again and
again to force the Egyptian idea of the soul into our traditional
categories without enabling us to understand even a little of it any
better"
[J. J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness - the Concept of Hylic
Pluralism, vol 1, p.108, (The Theosophical Society, Utrecht, 1978, Adyar-Madras)]
The reason for this lack of understanding is not only the absence of
esoteric-occult knowledge on the part of the scholars, but also the fact
that we are dealing with a Civilization that spanned several thousands
of years. Throughout that long period, it is obvious that meanings would
change, and new ideas and multiple schools of thought develop, so that
the same word is used in a totally different context. Compare for
example the modern use of the words Soul, Spirit, Mind, Consciousness,
and Psyche. These words are given totally different meanings today than
they - or their counterparts - were given 2000 years ago. What is more,
different religious, philosophical, and psychological writers, give
widely differing meanings to the same term. Even in contemporary
occultism and esotericism, where one would expect a greater degree of
precision, the meaning of technical terms such as astral, etheric,
mental, causal, and Soul, varies dramatically. Obviously, the situation
was the same with the Egyptians. So we would have a situation where the
same term seems to describe several different realities, or
alternatively where two terms describe the same thing.
In spite of all this, the Ancient Egyptian conception reveals great
insight and sophistication concerning the nature of
personality-existence after physical death, so much so that many of
their ideas could be used to form a framework of understanding that is
still valid today. In this book I have attempted to do just that; to
apply the occult knowledge of the Egyptians to a modern-day
under-standing of the nature of after-life existence.
2-iii The Egyptian Souls - An Interpretation
Perhaps the best way to begin would be to focus only on those
soul-principles which are readily comprehensible. For whatever their
meaning may have been to the Egyptians themselves, the Sahu (Spiritualised
body), Khaibit (Shadow), Sekhem (Strength), and Ren (Name) have little
to indicate their meaning to us today. But concepts such as the KA, BA,
and AKH are of much usefulness, if we give them a specific meaning. By
Ka we could assume to mean that aspect of the disincarnate personality
which remains connected with physical existence, especially through the
medium of the tomb. The Ba would be the somewhat more refined aspect
which can maintain its existence apart from the physical world, and,
passing through many obstacles, finally attains to heaven. It could
perhaps be compared with the "astral body", the subtle vehicle of
consciousness, of modern popular occultism. The Ab or "Heart" -
equivalent to the "Mind" or consciousness in the psychological sense -
would constitute what the great early twentieth century psychologists
such as Freud and even more so Jung would call the Ego, the principle of
self-consciousness. Finally, the Akhu is the principle which ascends
into the celestial cosmos. Admittedly this still sounds rather
confusing, but hopefully the situation will be clarified in the
following pages.
It should be emphasised that the above list does not refer to the
successive stages a single soul passes through, as say the Spiritualist
would assume, but rather the simultaneous after-life of the multiple
principles that together in life make up the human personality. As one
Egyptologist puts it:
"The dead man is at one and the same time in heaven, in the god's boat
[Re, the sun- god's, celestial barge], under the earth, tilling the
Elysian fields, and in his tomb enjoying his victuals"
[Lionel Casson, Ancient Egypt, p.81 (Time- Life Books, 1966)]
This concept of a multiple and simultaneous after- life follows
naturally from the assumption, clearly held by the ancient Egyptians, of
man/woman as a compound being. Obviously, if the individual person is a
compound being, and if these separate "pieces" survive death, it follows
that each "piece" will have its own unique after-life fate. This is in
fact the central thesis of a number of different afterlife ontologies
from: http://www.kheper.net/topics/bardo/egyptian.htm
**
**
The Spiritual Bookstore Online World Religion Library
*
*