What can we learn from ancient Egypt about soul travel and viable gates to the Otherworld? Among the dense menagerie of Egyptian deities and practices
evolved over 3,000 years, so far as we can fathom them through scholarship and far memory, five distinctive themes emerge:
1. 1. Shapeshifting is a preferred model for soul travel
The gods assume the forms of birds or animals. Humans, in
assuming the god forms, take the shames of the same birds and animals.
Shapeshifting is one of the shortest passages through the terrors of the
Underworld to the heavens of the blessed. In facing down his adversaries, the
journeying soul may assume successive forms including those of his most terrifying
challengers, such as the crocodile god Sobek.
This type of shapeshifting is not
reserved for the deceased. It is a model for the living of how to journey most
effectively in the subtle body. There is a clear continuum here with shamanic
practice. Just as in Egypt the gods show themselves as birds or animals, the
animal powers – in shamanic cultures – are not confined to animal forms but may
display themselves as humans or gods.
- Feeding and Preserving the
Energy Double
The Egyptian cult of the Ka was an incredibly elaborate
magical industry devoted to escaping the “second death” and ensuring the
survival of the dream body or astral double close to the realms of the living.
It is clearly based on the recognition that different aspects of soul and
spirit go to different places after physical death. The Ka has its own priests,
responsible for its care and feeding. In the event of their death or
dereliction, the Ka may be sustained by objects or images placed in the tomb
that supply magical food and support. The Ka interacts with the living. It can
travel from its house – the sarcophagus or a separate house or statue inside
the tomb – through special doors, just as it sees through special eyes. It may
influence the living for good or bad. It may be the source of prophetic dreams.
It may stand guard over tomb and their treasures, as in the magical tale of
Khaemewas and the Book of Thoth.
- Testing Alternate Routes
to the Neterworlds
The Egyptians studied and tested various itineraries for
traveling to heavens, star worlds and neterworlds. In several thousands of
years of evolution, magic and experiment, they developed a rich geography of
the afterlife, peopled by a host of gods and demons who set trials and
obstacles in the path of the journeyer.
The Book of Gates depicts the departed
soul having to confront a series of terrifying gatekeepers who may all be
personifications of the Great Goddess. In other funerary texts, the pilgrim
soul has to evade the nets of an implacable Soultaker, brave up to the attacks
of a series of monstrous beasts in a passage through utter darkness, or survive
a dramatic life review in the hall of judgment where the heart is weighed
against the feather of Ma’at, the divine embodiment of natural law. Go out with
a heavy heart, and you are consigned to the ravening monster Ammit.
The
Egyptians believed that it helped to cast off from this earth with a good route
map, and to know the names of those you will meet. A well-equipped traveler
took a map and recognition codes with him into his grave.
- Knowing the Names
Knowing the names of the entities you’ll meet along the way
was one of the best ways to prepare for these journeys. Egypt was a land of
magicians, and the hekau (magic words) were thought to bring things into
manifestation; Heka, the god who personified Magic, rides with Ra in the solar
barque along with Sia (Intelligence). Knowing the secret names of the neteru
and how to vibrate the hidden vowels was one of the highest magical arts. There
is a thriller about hhow Isis gleaned the secret name of Ra by catching his
spittle to make a scorpion that stung him. Because it was made from his own
spit, it had the power to kill; Isis promised a cure at the price of learning
his secret name. Now she can wield his power. On the roads of the neterworlds,
the journeyer assumes the powers of his challengers – and sometimes their forms
– by speaking their names.
- Way of the Heart
It is easy to get lost in the thickets of exotic names and
directions, in which many pantheons and rescensions over millennia meet and
merge and morph, in cohabitation with earth spirits and perhaps star travelers.
Let’s notice that the Egyptian craft of death is also a plan for larger life,
at home in multiple worlds from the Duat to the Akhet. Of special interest are
the Way of Ra and the Way of Osiris (they merge in mystery texts and vignettes
of Osiris transforming into Ra, or birthing him from within his mummified
corpse). The Way of Ra is the story of the 12 Hours in the funerary texts, in
which we see the Boat of Ra go through many levels of the Underworld and
survive many challenges before it is reborn. It may also open into the Way of
the Sun Behind the Sun, the opening of a stargate that may lead to the
intelligences of the Sirius star system>
The Way of Osiris requires the
experience of death and rebirth within a Mystery or shamanic initiation. It
becomes enfolded into the ethical teachings implicit in the scenes of the
Weighing of the Heart and the 42 assessors.
Let’s observe that throughout it is
the heart that provides the operating center and purpose for the journeys.
While the brain is discarded, the heart remains in the chest, sometimes
protected by a heart scarab of carnelian.
Approaching the place of inquisition
and judgment, the traveler is reminded to call on his heart – the Ka of his
heart – to speak and act for him.
My heart, my mother
My heart, my mother
My heart of my becoming
Photo: Hathor in the Louvre by RM
