The Pyramid of Unas
Presented on: Tuesday, January 14, 1986
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 2 of 52
The Pyramid of Unas
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, January 14, 1986
Transcript:
The date is January 14th 1986. This is the second lecture at The Whirling Rainbow School by Roger Weir on the new series which he is calling Osiris to Benjamin Franklin, the Hermetic tradition and will last for the entire year.
The title for this one will be the pyramid of unas or onus.
The Hermetic tradition as we have seen, starting last week, has a very peculiar flavor to it. And needs to be passed on in person. And only in that mode is there a viability of cognizance. Or we should say perhaps a recognition, recognizance. This is a very difficult to appreciate unless one has had this experience personally. We are normally able to understand through intelligence content and form. But there is a particular formless content which cannot be passed on in any other way except by direct personal experience. In India for instance this is known as darshan, having a view. and the darshan, the effectiveness of the darshan, is not just a sentimental traditional bhakti demonstration but has a veracity to it. And in the Hermetic tradition there must be this personal contact. the same thing obtains in the Mahayana. The way in which the Mahayana has been passed on is by personal contact. And only by someone who has enjoyed this transmission. And it's called the transmission of the lamp in the Mahayana. And the lamp is given in transmission outside of the doctrines. And there is no way to get it without having personally experienced it. Again as esoteric Christianity in the earlier centuries was based upon direct personal laying on of the hands in the sense of baptism and communion. And this was taken from Jesus directly, personally. So there are many traditions in which the lineage the tradition is incumbent for its formless context upon a personal transmission.
In ancient Egypt this seems to have been the province of Thoth. The context within which intelligence can operate. That is to say language and time. Because we need to have an operation within time as well as within language. And Thoth or Hermes is this figure who represents for us, or who presents to us, this basic context of intelligibility. Originally Thoth was associated with the moon. That is to say distinct from our feminizing of the moon that in ancient Egypt it was the masculine Thoth that was associated with the moon. In terms of its temporality.
And here we have to understand that the Egyptian idea of temporality is markedly different from ours. To the Egyptian sense time is a series of compartments which can or cannot be filled. They may be filled. They may not be filled. But the number of compartments is ongoing. So that for instance if we're talking about minutes in an ancient Egyptian way there are all these minutes that line themselves up and go pass and whatever happens happens within the cubbyhole, the pigeonhole of that minute. Or that minute. Or that minute and so on. So that time is segmented. And the segmentation is quite real.
So that Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, the hieroglyphs occupy that particular compartment of space. And there may be other hieroglyphs and they will be in other compartments of space. There may be compartments that have no hieroglyphs but there are still compartments. It is not as if all of the hieroglyphs then denote all of the spaces. It's not as if any particular occurrence then happens just against the flow of time. There's no such thing in ancient Egyptian thought as the kind of berksonian flow which we have. It is compartmentalized. It is segmented. And so the real presents itself always in terms of a shapedness in some sequence. This is very important.
The only unshaped unsequensed is a formlessness which is never alluded to the context of all of the shapedness. All times. All space. The all was designated by the ancient Egyptians as Atum. A-t-u-m. Atum. So very early on in Egyptian history, the old kingdom somewhere around 3000 B.C. Atum was designated as the all. And this was later on given a symbolic image of the dying Sun. The dying Sun fading away. Not so much into the darkness but going into the journey below the horizon. And along the underground river from West to East. So that it can rise again and be born again. So that the Sun coming up has a vigorous new birth in the morning. And the morning Sun is brand new. And when it goes through the sky it doesn't just course through the sky. There's no sense of duration. At every phase there is the Sun at this particular stage. So that to the Egyptian mind it would not be the motion-picture that is real but it would be the little photographs with the sprockets that make the film. That that would be what is real. And that only by regarding time and space in terms of the little frames of reference can one be exact and know. Otherwise there is no way to know. So that the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians, would look quite askance at our kind of Alfred North Whitehead process and reality type of thinking. This would be a **inaudible word** to them. This would be a blur to them.
In Egyptian. In the Egyptian language and we have here at the Whirling Rainbow The Egyptian Grammar of Gardner published by the Griffith Institute. If we look at the ancient Egyptian character for God. We will find in the back of Gardner when we look under G, God. We are given a straight line with a little square at the top. Now a hundred years ago the first Egyptologist to work with this called this an axe. And for a long time it was described as an axe. And that this was the basic symbol for our God. Sometimes there's a variant of having a bearded Pharohnic figure seated after this line with the middle square at the top. Sometimes there were two or three of these lines with a little square at the top put together. And this was the plural. And there was a feminine plural and a masculine plural. But when it came to pronouncing this we had a lot of trouble. Because Egyptian does not have the vowels. Just the consonants. And the consonants were n,t,r. and early on this word was given the vowels e after the N and after the T. So it was in script netre. Netre. This meant God. But what really was its connotation.
**inaudible name**, the first really great french egyptologist to write a consummate history, thought that this meant something like coming into existence. Sort of becoming. Other Egyptologists settle for the word strong. That it must mean strong in the sense of enduring and so forth. And finally some compromise was reached by the time of Budge saying well this must be strong in the sense of re-occurring, re-emerging. That Gods are like this. they're able to to have themselves reborn and so forth.
But it turns out that this symbol used for God used for an inter is not an axe at all. But is actually a wrapped pole like a wrapped wand. And that this is the the last little square up here is the last bit of the wrapping that would wrap it. like a flag. but it's like a flagpole that is completely wrapped by its flag as in a bandage. As in mummifying some kind of a sceptre. This is an extraordinary thing.
And when we look at Wallis Budge The Gods of the Egyptians and he is trying to tell us about the word netre. Before this flagedness was seen. He writes, "We have already said that the common word given by the Egyptians to God and God and spirits of every kind. And beings of all sorts and kinds and forms were supposed to so possessed any superhuman or supernatural power. This was netre. Anything that had supernatural power. Super natural. And the hieroglyph which is used both as the determinative of this word and also as an ideagraph is then this little flag or this little axe. and he goes on to say that, when we translate the Egyptian hieroglyphic we have this term netre used in various ways. The first line here gives Egyptian hieroglyphic and the translation is boy netre, comma heir of eternity, comma beginning and giving birth to himself. Another you see...usage of it, I have become netre. Another I have risen up in the form of a hawk netre. Another I have become pure. I have become netre. I have become a spirit. I have become strong. I have become a soul. The character for netre here is extremely different from spirit strong or soul. So that netre was a very peculiar term. And yet it is the most remarkable of all the early Egyptian terms because it is the one definitely that meant God. What we would term God. It has all the ambiguities in it that we have for our word God.
One of the best of the recent books on ancient Egypt translated from the German called Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt by Erich Hornung. Translated here a few years ago. Published by Cornell University Press. The whole first part of the book concerns this word netre. And he writes that apart from these general hieroglyphs for God there is a whole series of pictorial signs for particulars zoomorphic and anthropomorphic deities. So there are many, many anthropomorphic or zoomorphic deities. Zoomorphic being having human and animal mixed together. Budge and many of the early writers apologised for the Egyptians using these animals. These parts of animals. Saying at one point Budge apologizes for the Egyptians being half civilized Africans as compared to the Greeks and Romans. But there were zoomorphic gods for the Romans. There were zoomorphic figures for the Greeks.
The insight into mixing human and animal parts has to come from an understanding that there are not qualities that blend so easily in the ancient mind. There are compartmentalizations. Whatever is hawkedness is a hawk. whatever as humaneness is a human. If you're putting together humaneness and hawkedness then you don't blur them. But that compartment of time space that is hawkedness is still a hawk. the head of Horus is a hawk. It's not a man's head at all. The head of Thoth is an Ibis. It is not a primitive zoomorphic kind of barbarity but it's the tone of mind that sees in this way.
Now this tone of mind that sees compartmentalized space, compartmentalized time and a kind of a static puzzle of pieces that fit together to make new concepts. This type of mind has difficulty with a particular branch of mathematics. This kind of mind has difficulty with fractions. Because in order to have command of fractions one must have a sense of manipulating the fractions in terms of a whole. And the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians, were particularly bad at fractions. Fractions of course being ratios. Ratios. Almost all of the Egyptian statements of ratios are one over whatever it is. And if they want to make something more complex they'll just add a bunch of one over somethings until they get enough. The only ratio that the Egyptians learned to handle other than one over whatever denominator it was, was 2/3. And it was a triumph for the Egyptian mind to be able to handle the 2/3 ratio. And a lot of the Egyptian construction of models, even of pyramids themselves, comes from being adept at using a 2/3 ratio in their computations. But not being able to effectively use other ratios very well.
Now netre in this sense is peculiar because it is the only word that we have from ancient Egyptian that shows that they had a concept of an undifferente all. A formless concept of the one. Which they somewhat recognize but could not allude to.
So that Atum, the all, was unstable in the Egyptian mentality as an image. And in order to stabilize Atum a whole cosmos of Gods was precipitated out of Atum seeking to find some kind of a stable expressible order. And out of this came four pairs of Gods and Goddesses. The first pair is Gebb, which would be Earth. And Nut which would be sky. Male and female. And keeping them apart because once you have them once you have that polarity then you have to have something keeping them apart. Air keeps earth and sky apart. so air was masculine, Shu. But you can't have just a a masculine by itself. So Tefnut moisture was paired off with Shu. So that you have Shu and Tefnut, a male and female, air and moisture keeping apart Gebb Earth and Newt the feminine sky. And from this quaternary of two pairs, two males and two females, you had a second quaternary that came in. Isis and Osiris and Set or Seth and Nepthys.
So in order to deal with the ungraspable Atum, the all, one finds the next level of stability in four pairs or eight figures or what is called an ogg dode. So that the eight is the first time that there's expressive stability. And the city of Hermes, the city of Thoth was Hermopolis which was called the City of the Eight. The City of the Ogg Dode.
So at the very core, at the very beginning, the Hermetic tradition concerns itself with what is stable in man's expressiveness of divinity. The eight and one of the Nag Hamadi Hermetic treatise is the 8th reveals the 9th. Because when you have the ogg doad the only way that that ogg doad holds together in its comprehensiveness is to allude back to the primordial 9th. And those nine Gods together form what has always been known as The Aenied in Greek. So that when we get in the Hermetic tradition later on to the very sophisticated writings of Plotinus he will call them, they will be called the Aeneid. And at the very beginning of Egyptian history 5,000 years ago they were referred to as The Aenid. And not only is there and Aenid but for any particular compartment of time or space any particular person there's an Aeneid for that. for that time that time. That time, that time. That space, that space, that space. That person, that person. So that you have the dots of existence. Each dot having its completeness of divinity within it.
In ancient Egypt there were two branches. Two parts. Two major countries before 3100 B.C. Upper Egypt ran down to the first cataract around where the Aswan Dam is up to about where Cairo is today. And that was called Upper Egypt. And from where Cairo is today out into the Delta to the Mediterranean was called Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt had 22 divisions and Lower Egypt had 20 divisions. So that when the first great powerful Pharaoh sometimes referred to in the inscriptions as Narmer. Or occasionally referred to as Aha. Or referred to in the Hellenistic King list as Menes. Menes. M-e-n or sometimes M-i-n. Or M-e-n-e-s. Menes or Narmer the first unifier of North and South Egypt, of Lower and Upper Egypt. So that Egypt then has 42 of these provinces. they were called nomes. N-o-m-e-s. Each of the nomes was a geographic locality. And any one of those nomes had its own natural Gods and Goddesses based on animals or based upon mythic mythologies that were current in those geographical divisions. And they did not cross over. The only thing that crossed over was the notion that the Aeneidness held in all of the nomes. So that the unity religiously of Egypt originally was not that there was one religion so much but there was a single structure of existence which repeated itself in any particular place. Ogg doad down to the infinitely small.
Atum, the all, was lost sight of increasingly because of the powerful expressiveness of this ogg doad of these four pairs of Gods and Goddesses. But the coherence of the ogg doad, of the eigth is dependent upon the ninth. Because it is the ninth that is sort of the centeredness of it. You might think of the whirling rainbow symbol that we use from the Navajo Indians. The four pairs clustered around together and it makes a kind of a center.
So that the Aeneid eventually after the old kingdom came to re-include Atum in a new form called Re. R-e. Re the powerful sun. So that Re becomes in the towards the end of the the middle kingdom becomes one of the more powerful of the Gods. And we'll see in a couple weeks when we get to the litany of Re that the sun God Re then becomes increasingly important.
In the motion of trying to express what happens with the relationship of man, of human beings, to this in Aenead, to this ogg doad, to this universe that's compartmentalized. The ancient Egyptians as far back as we can go. And the furthest back that we can go in terms of an extended inscription is in the Pyramid of Unas. Now Unas was a Pharaoh at the very end of the fifth dynasty. And the Old Kingdom runs from the 3rd to the 6th dynasties. Unas lived around 2375 to roughly 2345 B.C. So that he is an older contemporary by about a couple of generations from some of the early Sumerian Kings. Sargon the great would have come about two generations after Unas.
Unas was a extremely powerful individual. And the way that Upper and Lower Egypt when they were united, the way that they were kept together was that a new capital was made for all of Egypt called Memphis. And Memphis was on the west side of the Nile not so very far away from Cairo. Somewhere in that vicinity. And outside of Memphis, outside of the ceremonial power city, are some of the earliest pyramids. Not the earliest like the Pyramid of Cheops or the Pyramid of Kafre or so forth. But the Step pyramid, the Bent pyramid is there. And the pyramid of Unas is there. And the burial site around Memphis is called Saqqara, with two Q's. Saqqara. And Saqqara along with Abydos further down the Nile several hundred miles down, are the earliest sites that we have of putting together the Hermetic tradition. And in Saqqara, in the pyramid of Una's we have the for the first time in recorded human history an extensive documentation. An extensive writing which gives us a chance to use our intuition to understand how they were thinking of divinity. Because the interior of the pyramid of Unas is inscribed with hieroglyphics. From the beginning as soon as you come into the threshold, along the ante room and the corridor is going down to the sarcophagus chamber. All of the walls and the ceilings, everything is covered with writing and we have that writing. In fact we have a photographic representation of all of the walls and all of the hieroglyphics with a complete English translation. Made here for the first time complete in this form I believe in the 1960's. This was 1968.
Now this is very peculiar. And we have to understand something before we get into the pyramid of Unas text. Generally a common human being had a soul called a ba. But also aside from the soul had a vital force called the ka. The ka and the ba were different. The ba was like a space shape. A shape that was in space. And the ka was a shape that moved in time. so that the ka is a life force, a vital force, but an eternal in the sense that it would it had a lot of time. That it was able to occur, as it will say in the Pyramid of Unas, that once ka has a horizon of millions of years. You have a lot of time. You have more time than you could comprehend. It's close to what we call eternal but if you'll take note it's a little different. So that when the pyramid of Unas is going to talk about what we would call eternity they will call that everlastingness. Everlastingness. That there is no end to the time compartmentalizations where the ka occur.
Also as a being becomes more divine, raises up in its in his or her divine capacity, there is more and more capacity to have increased complexity. So that when one gets the level of a god, for instance, the God might have seven bas and fourteen kas. Which means that that God has an extremely complex life pattern and capacity. Can at any time, any compartment in time, or any circumstance in space can express one or more or all of these tremendous capacities. Might bring into play all 14 ka. And all seven ba at this particular time and moment. For a human being, a common human being, this would be an intolerable cacophony. It would be madness. So one of the distinguishing marks of a God for the ancient Egyptians is the ability to handle enormous complexity at any time. At any compartment in time. Or any position in space. And to keep the differentiations exacting. So specificity and exactness, precision in the religion of the ancient Egyptians was everything. It was everything.
One of the items that we will see when Unas goes to the land of the netherworld, is he will be threatened from behind by demons that try to confuse him. Because Unas has more than one ka because he was Pharaoh. A very powerful man. And the only way that he can keep his precision throughout the millions of years is to have had exquisite instruction while he was alive as to how to differentiate. And his instructor was Thoth. That the Hermetic tradition is the way in which a living human being can be prepared for the incredible journey of millions of years where only your precision will enable you to continue to exist. I'm being a little melodramatic on it but this is for instruction purposes.
We will see throughout the Hermetic tradition that the only basis upon which incredible sophistication of mind can be maintained is to have an intuitive sense of an undifferentiate all. Because if you had any element of mind other than undifferentiate all as the background, you would not be able to have the complex instant differentiation that you needed to survive on spiritual levels.
The pyramid was not just a building therefore. Not just a a building within which the tomb was located. The pyramid became the body of that person buried there. An extension of their body. So that their ka could circulate through the entire structure. And that the pyramid then became the extended body of that person. So that the extreme precision in making these pyramids was being exacting in the sense of religious commitment to having a body that was going to be able to survive the necessary complexities for the next millions of years. And the ka would have to inhabit this pyramid. And not only the pyramid but every pyramid was supported by a tremendous infrastructure social and economic infrastructure. There were fields and that made produce. There were individuals that farmed this. there were priests that form the sacraments. The sacrifices that went on. So all of the pyramids. There are over eighty pyramids that we have found. All of them had huge estates attached to them and these were to keep them in perpetuity. So the entire compound was considered to be the body.
One of the inscriptions is, "This pyramid of N is Osiris and his building as well. Approach thyself to N be not far from him in his name pyramid. So that here he rests. As Osiris did in the netherworld. And received a sustenance through an elaborate ritual." At the same time the pyramid representative solar mountain. The benben. The obelisk point dedicated to the Sun. The Egyptian word benben meant that pyramid which is the chip in the point of an obelisk. So the pyramid that you see on a ground has implicitly a shaft underneath it. And later on when an obelisk was raised, the very top of the obelisk rest of the pyramid point. This benben gives the sacred mound that joins earth to the sky. And makes it available for contact with the solar energy. Not just solar energy like in sun's rays. But it's that particular compartment of space which exists through all the compartments of time up to millions of years. That is extended beyond the earth, beyond the so-called natural into the divine space, the divine in realm. Even though say like with the pyramid of Unas it was only several hundred feet high. It isn't that it's just several hundred feet high. Doesn't have to be so towering high that it seems to touch of the Sun. It's that it's raised above the earth. It's at that compartment of space which exists then through everlasting time has been made and it then is a divine realm. That horizon of all the pyramids, the eighty pyramids above the ground level, that is a divine everlasting horizon that will never perish as long as they are cared for.
But the care for them, the circulation of the everlastingness of the ka within them is all dependent upon instruction. So that Thoth and thus the Hermetic tradition will have to be continues to be effective. If it is ever broken then all is lost. What is lost then is the continuity of the everlastingness. And so you can see that there was every motive in the world to keep the tradition accurate and intact. And so the tremendous continuity of Egypt passing on for thousands of years. A tradition that was almost unchanged. Not a sign of barbarity at all but a sign of precision in terms of the Egyptian mind.
In the pyramid test...text then. "Salutation to thee, the all. Salutation to the becoming one. He who became into being by himself. Thou aren't high in thy name Mound. Thou camest into being in thy name Kheper, he who comes into being. Atum Kheper thou was high as mound. Thou has appeared as benben in the Phoenix House at Heliopolis. Thou spinnest out as Shu. Thou ejectest as Tefnut." The earliest location in Heliopolis for having the Aeneid that focused upon Re coming in is what was being alluded to here.
But this is jumping ahead. Let's go to the pyramid of Unas. and when we come into it we come in at the entrance to the antechamber. And the first things that are there. "The doors of the sky are open. The doors of the sky are locked. The way that leads over the fire glow under that which assembles the Gods. What lets every Horace glide through, will also let Unas glide through. Over the fire glow. Under that which assembles the Gods. They make a way for Unas that Unas may pass along it. Unis is a Horus.
Please turn your cassette now. Mr. Weir will continue his lecture on the other side without a break in the continuity.
END OF SIDE 1
Unis is a Horus. How does Horus get in? Horus is a child of Isis and Osiris. but when you have Horus he's not among the ogg doad. He's not among those primal pairs. Those four pairs. So the only way to have Horus come in is for Horus to complete the Aeneid. Because one can't go beyond the Aeneid. The Aeneid is the esoteric wholeness, the pleromoa plus all of the stable expression of it in terms of the divine structure. so that very early on Horus becomes the divine child who is the sun. And Horus is symbolized by wings. So that one has the solid disk with the wings. This is the ninth. This is the, this is the, the power. The winged sun disk then becomes that esoteric guaranteer of the stability of the Gods. And the stability of the gods ensures a structure for time and space to continue in their coherence. And man may be everlasting as long as this goes on. But man in his most grand presentation, as a Pharaoh, as a divine human being becomes a Horus. Unas is a Horus.
They say then in the antechamber, "The sky is serene. Sopdet lives. Shines it is for Unas." Sopdet is the star Sirius. So that the starry expanses which are there are somehow related to the solar disk going through in the day. And then at night the stars come out, the day.
"The two Aenieds have purified themselves for him as the Great Bear constellation which cannot perish. The house of Unas which is in the sky will not perish. The throne of Unas which is on earth will not be destroyed. Men hide themselves that Gods fly up." There's a bifurcation. In fact one of the earliest religious books of the ancient Egyptians called The book of Amduat. The book of two ways. And it's not like an either/or two ways but it's that both these ways have to be gone through. One of them is under the earth and the other is through the sky. And where the earth and the sky meet again that's the threshold into everlastingness. So that wherever one is existentially at the beginning of the two ways it has a complement on the other side of the horizon from oneself that must be reached. and it must be reached by two different routes brought together precisely at the same time. This is one of the ways in which the portal, the threshold, to everlastingness is achieved. That that part of you which goes through the sky will match up exactly at the same time, in the same space of the part which goes under the earth. The human part in the pyramid goes underground, goes the earth way. Eventually it'll be the way of the 12 caverns. But the and that will be the way of the ka going through. But the soul will have to go through the sky.
This is an early form of an eschatology which is been lost sight of completely in the Christian rendition of it. In the Christian rendition the good spirits go up to heaven and the bad spirits go down to hell, under the earth. But the in the original Hermetic formulation all of that has to be brought together. Nobody is saved apart. That it is only by bringing the underground way and the heavenly way together at the other horizon of her...of reality that there is any possibility of recognizing the threshold to everlastingness. So one sees that implicit behind this tremendous precision and complexity is a purpose. What we would call an ulterior motive. That the all be regathered exactly in the way in which it is all. That if anything is left out it won't happen. Thus the Hermetic tradition will emphasize constantly on the precision of the mind.
And when we get to the Hermetic doctrines, in The Poimandres for instance, the 1st century A.D. in Alexandria there is a tremendous emphasis upon the clarity of mind. That before gnosis there it must be clarity of mind. And The Poimandres will start off and say, "I am vast spaces rising on high to pure clarity of vision." Before anything is said it will be like that.
In the Pyramid of Unas we have our first indications of this long journey. This is around 2350 B.C. this is a hundred, see 150, would be about 2500 years before The Poimandres.
As we go into the antechamber there's an utterance, "See Unas, all Re. recognize Unas, all Re. He is one of them who know thee. He knows when his Lord comes out he should not forget. The boon which the King gives prayer so that she who locks out when she locks out may open the doors of the horizon for the coming out of the morning barge." The morning barge to begin its journey over. Something is in the way. A she is in the way. She who locks out. She who locks out when she locks out. That feminine obstacle who is only her function of locking out. When this feminine presence in her function begins to occur Horus must be the true guide for Unas to be able to go through that threshold. It's the first threshold. She opens the doors of the horizon. If not she will lock him out.
"I know the Hall of the Royal seat in the middle of the Diocese of the Zenith. From which thou comest out and descend into the night barge. Order then Unas. Order him. order him to speak the words four times. One after another to these four raving ones who are behind thee. Who see with two faces. Who speak in a roar which is evil for those who are to be made miserable. For those whom they want to annihilate."
Here Unas must began his journey. And not only is the journey begun with the death of Unas in the burial. But that this whole description of the journey, the whole ritual of the journey is carved in language on the walls of the tomb. And the tomb is not just a single room but it's an entranceway, a long corridor, an antechamber and then another little place, and then the sarcophagus room. So it's a large complex. And everywhere on the complex from the beginning as one goes into the tomb the language carved on the walls and on the ceiling tells what is happening at that particular time, at that particular space in the journey. so that when one moves into that tomb immediately one is occupying that space, at that time. And that language is then precisely applicable. So that one reads and moves along and the journey occurs every time that one does this.
Can you see that there's a peculiar quality to the ancient Egyptian sense of reality. This happens every time that one of the kas of Unas would come through that threshold and start that journey again. Being able to do that consistently and constantly, again and again throughout millions of years is the everlastingness. Now you can see the tremendous emphasis upon keeping the hieroglyphics intact. And on keeping the name of the individual intact. And what a tremendous power there was on those who came after if they would take by order and have someone chisel your name out, chisel your cartouche out so it doesn't occur there. There is no way that you, your ka go through. No way that you could get so that the divine name, that your name, your real name is extraordinarily important. To be kept, mem....remembered and intact.
The word, the power of the word becomes 5,000 years ago at the very origins of the Hermetic tradition. The logos becomes extraordinarily powerful because it is the only way in which reality can be made to be everlasting for us. It's the only way. This ladder of meaning which we have to climb, again and again in order to ensure everlastingness must be intact.
Here we have skip over. And I realize because of time we probably won't finish it all. So we'll we'll come back to it next week. We won't to cheat you on anything here at all. this is the first time the tradition has been presented in this language in this country. And we will not cheat you.
Here's an incantation to say for Unas. "Unas is a great one. Unas came out between the thighs of the divine Aenied. Unas is he who is over the kas who unites the hearts for the one over wisdom." The one over wisdom is not a metaphor. It's not the one over wisdom. Not a metaphor for the all. It's one-for -wisdom. the one-for -over -wisdom. The one over wisdom is a ratio. Like one over character for wisdom. That particular precise fraction which must be understood in its precision.
And Unas, "Unas is he who is over the kas who unites hearts for the one over wisdom. He is the great one who is in possession of the divine book. The wisdom at the right of Re." Without the divine book there is no way to go. Who is the author of the divine book? It is Thoth. He is not only the maker of language. He is the writer of the books. He is the scribe of the gods. He is the maker of the precision of the mind which is able to understand all of it. And to have expressed it.
"Unas comes to his seat which is over the kas. Unas unites the hearts. the one over wisdom. The great, the one who art great. Unas has become wisdom in possession of the divine book at the right of Re." On the right hand. right hand side of Re.
As we go through the antechamber we come in the Pyramid of Unas. Remember now this is a thousand years before Moses. Thousand years. "He is purified who has purified himself in the field of rushes. Re has purified himself in the field of rushes. He is purified who has purified himself in the field of Rushes. This Unas has purified himself in the field of rushes. The hand of Unas is in the hand of Re. Nut take his hand. Shu lift him up. Shu lift him up. The great one. The Arayas fumigates the bull of Nian(?). The heat of the fiery breath is against you. Ye who are about the shine of the Sun God. Oh Great God whose name is unknown bring at once a meal for the unique Lord. Oh Lord of the horizon make place for Unas. If thou failest to make place for Unas, Unas will pronounce a curse against his father Geb. The earth shall not speak anymore. Geb shall not be able to defend himself. He whom Unas finds on his way he will eat him piecemeal."
Unas has a tremendous power because of his instruction. Because of having the divine book. Because of knowing what to say. Of how to read time-space language journeying his tomb. Everything is laid out for him. He has tremendous capacity. He becomes a Horus. He becomes the victor of the cosmos because of his precision. It is not like man being timorous, hopeful, insignificant person. It's that man in his tremendous mental precision becomes the most powerful being in the universe because of this. He is not only not daunted by the complexity of dealing with eternity in everlastingness. It's that he becomes a tremendously powerful by this. So that he becomes the Aeneid. He becomes the Horus.
Are we running out of time?
Comment from the audience: No
We have published by the University of California Press, a book entitled The Triumph of Horus: An Ancient Egyptian Sacred Drama. And it came out not so very long ago, 1974. The Triumph of Horus is an actual Egyptian sacred drama. In fact it is the sacred drama. Which was performed again and again. And again and again and again for thousands of years. The Triumph of Horus. Horus is committed constantly through eternity to struggle against Set. Set or Seth. Who is an obstacle. Or we should say in our precision now is obstacleness. Wherever Set is there is obstacleness. Horus must always triumph over this. He cannot triumph without the obstacleness. So that Set is divine. And Horus is divine. And the triumph of Horus is guaranteed throughout everlastingness because of Thoth. Without Thoth, without the Hermetic magas there is no way for reality to continue. If reality continues then the good will always triumph over the bad. Not because the good is stronger than the bad in terms of some kind of a contest. But that this is the way in which reality everlastingly continues. But the triumph of Horus must occur again and again and again throughout eternity. Otherwise nothing is real. So there must be a Set as an obstacle constantly all the time.
And the balance in this which would be a perfect polarity going nowhere static is given a little bit of an edge. And thus a dynamic because of Thoth. Because of the mind. Because of the clarity of the mind.
So that you see that the Hermetic tradition even 5000 years ago was extraordinarily accurate in it's quote mental assessment of the place of the mind, in the necessary structure of reality. When we look at The Triumph of Horus. When we looked at this Egyptian sacred drama there are many little scenes, many little episodes. And each of the episodes involves the stabbing by Horus of a hippopotamus. This is a primordial Moby Dick. The hippopotamus is stabbed in various places. The head, the shoulders, the rump, an eye, on a flank. Again and again this little drama. Done over and over again it isn't just that he has stabbed once. But it's that there is a ritual killing by every little anatomical part of the hippopotamus. Every little part. It was said in Egyptian mythology that the first ruler of Egypt, Menes or Narmer, was killed by hippopotamus after ruling for sixty two years. Which may or may not be some kind of historical beginning at this kind of a drama. But whether or not it was a historical beginning the theological understanding of the ancient Egyptians is quite distinct and not dependent upon some historical beginning.
Can you see there's no metaphor whatsoever in Egyptian minds. There is no metaphor whatsoever. There's no allegory. There's no sentimentalism. There's no Romanticism. None of these qualities are there at all. There's nothing but the tremendous will to be precise. To keep the real dynamic. And with this unbending kind of intensity the ancient Egyptian religion spun off on the outside, on the surface. As in hundreds and hundreds of of little bubbles. The reflections of incredible arrays of would-be Gods and Goddesses, animals and humans and so forth. But all of that is just the froth that's churned up by the intense commitment to keep to one single track. One single ongoing Aenied of truth. Which is only operative as long as there is someone to continue that journey. And because of his position on earth as a man it was the Pharaoh and the succeeding Pharaohs who were that protagonist. So that those pharaohs, that lineage of pharaohs, had to be informed to the enth degree while they were alive. their whole function was to understand the tremendous precision that they were involved in for everybody. Because only by their continuing that journey does reality continue to happen. So that one owed allegiance to the Pharaoh not as some peasant does to a feudal lord, or to a king, but because this is the only guarantee that the real happens at all. That was in the Old Kingdom.
And towards the end of the Old Kingdom towards, the end of the sixth dynasty, a democratic ideal sprang up. Because the structure of supporting the Pharaoh had grown so huge there was only one man. He could only be in one geographical place in the forty-two nomes. Usually right there in Memphis. So that the structures to support this, making these huge pyramids, made a huge social infrastructure so that there were a wealthy elite class of feudal lords who grew up in other parts of Egypt in other nomes. And they began to sense that this is awfully precarious to have reality based upon one person. What about us? Can we not receive instruction from Thoth? Can we not learn to read? Can we not learn the precision? And the end of the old kingdom came. And a period of several hundred years of social turmoil in ancient Egypt when the idea spread that one Pharaoh was too precarious for reality. There must be many of us. And the Old Kingdom ended that way. And it was the first making public, if you can call taking in a small elite making public, but it was the first opening up of religion. And Thoth became then the tutor of the people for a while.
Now we're going to come back next week and finish up the pyramid of unas. And we'll just keep at this until we get through the, the documents. I will try to get through the Pyramid of Unas and then begin on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And we'll just continue this for about the next two Tuesdays. We'll finish up Unas and begin on the Book of the Dead next week. And the following week while we'll try and finish up the Book of the Dead. All of this documentation is necessary because when it comes down to the Hellenistic times, we have already seen in the course on archetypal Alexandria what a tremendous implosion there was when the Jewish and the Greek thought came together. What we have not seen. And what almost nobody has understood is that this ancient Egyptian tradition, this Hermetic tradition, predated the Jewish. And predated the Greek. And when the Hellenistic, a Greco Jewish synthesis was made. in the 2nd century B.C. is when it started. Those who were still remembering still inheritors of the ancient Egyptian Hermetic tradition realized that they were only speaking in metaphor. They were only speaking in analogy. And that they had a sense of the real, of the divine, intact from the earliest days. Some 3,000 years before. Because there were still individuals who could read the hieroglyphics at that time. And so we're going to see that the Hermetic tradition comes out of all of this. But has a kind of a Renaissance, a kind of a revival, starting in the 2nd century B.C. But we have to understand what it was that there was a revival of. What it was that there was a renaissance of.
And then there will be a tremendous change. because in the 1st century A.D. will see that the Hermetic tradition realizes that in fact the instruction must continue for their sense of the real to continue to happen. Later on of course some 35-4500 years after the pyramid of Unas it will be summed up for the Rosicrucian Hermeticists that the life lived is the doctrine received. And it becomes more esoteric the more background that you have. That this is not just a polite saying or a cute saying. It's like an esoteric key to the understanding of how the real continues at all.
Well thanks for your patience. And we'll get to it next week.
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