Ancient Psychedelia: Alien Gods & Mushroom Goddesses
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| The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. "Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?-- I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept:-- The Sphinx - by: Ralph Waldo Emerson Chapter 10: Art of the Occult in the Eye of Ra It would probably be safe to say that Egypt was the most advanced ancient civilization of all, far exceeding the Hittite and Mitanni kingdoms and the reign of Sargon of Akkad. Around 3150 BC, Egypt was invaded, and the pharaoh of the First Dynasty was Narmer who united Upper and Lower Egypt. (1) This is the time when Egypt took on a new role in the Middle East. The warrior class Indo-Europeans with the horse-drawn chariots were termed the Maryannu from descriptions given in the Amarna Letters by Haapi. This new class of aristocracy took over the whole Middle East including Egypt. (2) It appears that Egypt was the first civilization that did not hold the goddess in the highest positions and it’s likely that it was here that solar worship really took off, redefining the universal order as male-centric in their mythos. Egypt is also a place where slavery really took off and became a way of life for everyone. This is a major side effect of the illness of Patriarchy and the ideology that it’s based upon. (3) As early as 2850 BC, an Egyptian creation myth had taken shape which put forth the idea that creation was called into being by the “spoken word.” (4) The “Pyramid Texts” comprise of the texts which were inscribed on the sarcophagi and walls of the pyramids at Saqqara in the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (2613 - 2181 BC). From what has been gathered of the Pyramid Texts, Egypt was well advanced in her intellectual and spiritual development by the 4th and 3rd millennium BC. (5) Most of the customs and practices that Egypt had in the latter years were already adopted at this stage of development. (6) The Egyptians considered words “a great mystery” and in the Book of the Dead we are warned against seeing the words which are prohibited to everyone but the initiated: “It is not to be looked at.” … “The eye of no man whatsoever must see it; it is a thing of abomination for [every man] to know it. Hide it therefore; the Book of the Lady of the Hidden Temple is its name.” (7) The Book of the Dead (c. 1000 BC) contains some interesting mushroom occulted images, one of which depicts several worshippers before an Egyptian deity, with Anubis behind the deity, holding what appears to be a mushroom in the body center (35b). |
 (35b) Egyptian Book of the Dead c. 1000 BC One of the theological doctrines of creation that centered on a male deity in Egypt (c. 744-656 BC.) was the Memphite Theology which represented the earth as a male god Geb, born from Ptah, the Supreme Creator, who, in the Ennead, was elevated above Atum. (8) Another male deity of a much older period from the 4th millennium BC, in pre-Dynastic Egypt, was the god Min of Koptos who personified the generative force in nature as the bestower of procreative power, “opening the clouds,” and so giving life to vegetation. (9) The Hyksos were thought to be a people of Western Asiatic origin who settled in the eastern Nile Delta shortly before 1650 BC. The Hyksos remained a powerful influence in Egypt from 1650 BC, when they established the 15th Dynasty, to 1550, when their last king, Khamudi, was expelled from Egypt. The Hyksos worshiped Hadad as their local storm god. Josephus, in the 3rd century AD, writing in Against Apion, mentions the Hyksos, citing Manethos, a 3rd century BC priest and historian who knew pre-Ptolemaic history. Manetho describes the Hyksos as armed invaders who never encountered much resistance taking the Egyptian kingdom by military force, burning cities, destroying temples and enslaving women and children. (10) Composite bows, horse-drawn war chariots, improved arrowheads and new types of swords and daggers, improved shields and new metal helmets were revolutionary weapons of conquest. (11) (1) When God was a Woman, p. 87 (2) Before the Bible, p. 25-26 (3) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 240-1 (4) Occidental Mythology, p. 112; Oriental Mythology, p. 83-91 (5) Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 30 ff (6) Healing Gods, p. 4 (7) ibid, p. 5; Papyrus Leyden, 348, recto 2, 7) (Budge, Egyptian Magic, p. 116; also Baillet, Idees morales dans l’Egypte antique, pp. 72-75 (8) Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Oxford, 1934, pp. 173, 256; Badawi, Der Gott Chnum, Gluckstad, 1937, pp. 56ff (9) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 58; Gauthier, Les fetes de dieu Min, Cairo, 1931, pp. 194, 235 (10) History of Egypt from the Earliest Time to the Persian Conquest, James Henry Breasted, p. 216, republished 2003 (11) Winlock, Herbert E., The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes |
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