Post by Malcolm on Jul 21, 2013 1:11:30 GMT -5
Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "Mythology knows nothing of miracle, nor the need of it. Miracle has no place in the Egyptian Ritual. But the Ritual shows us how the necessity for it arose as a modus operandi when the gnosis had to be accounted for by ignorance and the mythos was converted into human history.
For example, the sun or the sun-god Atum is described in the Ritual as going over the surface of the lake of Mati, in Abydos, the place of rebirth, or of sunrise. That which is done mythically by the god is performed by the manes on the eschatological plane, and as he is in the human likeness, it follows that he must walk the water in the sun-god's track. He says, "the great God who is there is Ra himself. I walk on his road; I know the surface of the lake of Mati.
The water of Mati is the road by which Atum-Ra goes to traverse the field of divine harvest" (Rit., 17). In the first phase the sun (or solar god) traverses the celestial water at dawn. In the eschatological continuation the human soul in Amenta does the same because assimilated to the character of the god. It is but a mode of representing phenomena in the two worlds of the double earth, the imagery of upper earth being repeated in spirit-world.
But if we substitute a human being for the solar god or the manes in Amenta, and make him walk the water in our world on the surface of the sea or lake of Galilee, instead of the lake of Mati in Amenta, the water-walking can only be done by miracle. Such is the genesis of the Biblical miracles in both the Old Testament and the New. This we are now able to prove twice over by means of the original matter and mode of the mythos in the Egyptian eschatology that was humanized or literalised in legends and at last converted into Christian history.
You cannot rationalize the Bible miracles by reducing them to what may be thought reasonable dimensions.
As Matthew Arnold said, "this is as if we were startled by the extravagance of supposing Cinderella's fairy godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin into a coach-and-six, but should suggest that she did really change it into a one-horse-cab".
It is not a matter of degree or proportion, but of a radical difference in the fundamental nature of things. It is not the kind of transformation that was applied to the primary facts, nor is this transformation the result of imagination. It was not a result of the faculty of imagining that a man should be supposed to walk the water and not sink. Such an imagining was controverted by all the past of human experience.
When the Egyptians portrayed a human impossibility - a miracle - they depicted a pair of feet walking on the water. This was a mode of superhuman force first made manifest by the elemental powers such as light and darkness, the wind, or the spirit of the storm.
The water-walker was an old type of deity. The Christian miracles are false modes of explaining that which was ignorantly misappropriated. The gnostic interpretation of the Kamite mysteries had no need of miracles, no reversal or violation of natural law. The process by which miracles, or total violations of natural law, arose, was through perversion of ancient knowledge by later ignorance - not in the false or exaggerated reports of eye-witnesses. Nor could anything be settled by a conflict of opinions in the domain of ideas.
We must have some foothold and ground of fact to go upon even to fight the battle. As it is in physical science, we have to ascertain the knowable. It avails nothing to take refuge in the unknown or to enshroud ourselves in mystery. The legends of mythology were not ideal, nor based upon abstract ideas. They were not first evolved from the inner consciousness, but from facts in outward nature that are for ever verifiable.
The mysteries that "historic Christianity" took over without understanding, and preserved as food for faith, or as problems for metaphysical speculation, are fathomable and even simple when truly interpreted, but they have and can have no solution on the supposed historic ground.
And with its bogus miracles surreptitiously derived from the ancient mysteries by falsification of the myths, it has destroyed or tended to destroy all standing-ground of common sense in natural reality. With its "historical" virgin mother of a God who was her "historical" child, it has made a double mockery of nature, human and divine. With its risen corpse for an anointed Christ the only Son of God, it has deified an image of death itself and made a mortuary of the human mind.
When it is conclusively proved that the Christian miracles are nothing more than a pagan mode of symbolical representation literalised, there is no longer any question of contravening, or breaking, or even challenging any well-known laws of nature.
The discussion as to the probability or possibility of miracle on the old grounds of belief and doubt is closed for ever.
A glance at the Egyptian pictures will show that the Horus or Christ is the young sun-god who walks the waters in Amenta not on the upper earth, and that the evil spirits who enter the swine and are driven down into the lake are the souls of those who were condemned in the great judgment as typhonian, the black pig being a type of Sut the evil being.
A study of these miracles as they were originally rendered will lead to an understanding of their true significance, and here as everywhere else the truth of the matter once attained must ultimately put an end to the false belief: Falsehood hath nothing in the world to do, But lie to live and die to prove the true!
Notes: Massey uses the term 'Amenta' from Ancient Egyptian which means 'The Land of the God Amen'. Amen was the setting Sun, whilst Ra was a general name for God. All other Egyptian gods were not separate but different characteristics of the One God. In Christianity they became 'Saints'. He also uses the word 'Kamite' for 'Egyptian' since Egypt was known as The Black Land, i.e. KEMET or KAMET.
For example, the sun or the sun-god Atum is described in the Ritual as going over the surface of the lake of Mati, in Abydos, the place of rebirth, or of sunrise. That which is done mythically by the god is performed by the manes on the eschatological plane, and as he is in the human likeness, it follows that he must walk the water in the sun-god's track. He says, "the great God who is there is Ra himself. I walk on his road; I know the surface of the lake of Mati.
The water of Mati is the road by which Atum-Ra goes to traverse the field of divine harvest" (Rit., 17). In the first phase the sun (or solar god) traverses the celestial water at dawn. In the eschatological continuation the human soul in Amenta does the same because assimilated to the character of the god. It is but a mode of representing phenomena in the two worlds of the double earth, the imagery of upper earth being repeated in spirit-world.
But if we substitute a human being for the solar god or the manes in Amenta, and make him walk the water in our world on the surface of the sea or lake of Galilee, instead of the lake of Mati in Amenta, the water-walking can only be done by miracle. Such is the genesis of the Biblical miracles in both the Old Testament and the New. This we are now able to prove twice over by means of the original matter and mode of the mythos in the Egyptian eschatology that was humanized or literalised in legends and at last converted into Christian history.
You cannot rationalize the Bible miracles by reducing them to what may be thought reasonable dimensions.
As Matthew Arnold said, "this is as if we were startled by the extravagance of supposing Cinderella's fairy godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin into a coach-and-six, but should suggest that she did really change it into a one-horse-cab".
It is not a matter of degree or proportion, but of a radical difference in the fundamental nature of things. It is not the kind of transformation that was applied to the primary facts, nor is this transformation the result of imagination. It was not a result of the faculty of imagining that a man should be supposed to walk the water and not sink. Such an imagining was controverted by all the past of human experience.
When the Egyptians portrayed a human impossibility - a miracle - they depicted a pair of feet walking on the water. This was a mode of superhuman force first made manifest by the elemental powers such as light and darkness, the wind, or the spirit of the storm.
The water-walker was an old type of deity. The Christian miracles are false modes of explaining that which was ignorantly misappropriated. The gnostic interpretation of the Kamite mysteries had no need of miracles, no reversal or violation of natural law. The process by which miracles, or total violations of natural law, arose, was through perversion of ancient knowledge by later ignorance - not in the false or exaggerated reports of eye-witnesses. Nor could anything be settled by a conflict of opinions in the domain of ideas.
We must have some foothold and ground of fact to go upon even to fight the battle. As it is in physical science, we have to ascertain the knowable. It avails nothing to take refuge in the unknown or to enshroud ourselves in mystery. The legends of mythology were not ideal, nor based upon abstract ideas. They were not first evolved from the inner consciousness, but from facts in outward nature that are for ever verifiable.
The mysteries that "historic Christianity" took over without understanding, and preserved as food for faith, or as problems for metaphysical speculation, are fathomable and even simple when truly interpreted, but they have and can have no solution on the supposed historic ground.
And with its bogus miracles surreptitiously derived from the ancient mysteries by falsification of the myths, it has destroyed or tended to destroy all standing-ground of common sense in natural reality. With its "historical" virgin mother of a God who was her "historical" child, it has made a double mockery of nature, human and divine. With its risen corpse for an anointed Christ the only Son of God, it has deified an image of death itself and made a mortuary of the human mind.
When it is conclusively proved that the Christian miracles are nothing more than a pagan mode of symbolical representation literalised, there is no longer any question of contravening, or breaking, or even challenging any well-known laws of nature.
The discussion as to the probability or possibility of miracle on the old grounds of belief and doubt is closed for ever.
A glance at the Egyptian pictures will show that the Horus or Christ is the young sun-god who walks the waters in Amenta not on the upper earth, and that the evil spirits who enter the swine and are driven down into the lake are the souls of those who were condemned in the great judgment as typhonian, the black pig being a type of Sut the evil being.
A study of these miracles as they were originally rendered will lead to an understanding of their true significance, and here as everywhere else the truth of the matter once attained must ultimately put an end to the false belief: Falsehood hath nothing in the world to do, But lie to live and die to prove the true!
Notes: Massey uses the term 'Amenta' from Ancient Egyptian which means 'The Land of the God Amen'. Amen was the setting Sun, whilst Ra was a general name for God. All other Egyptian gods were not separate but different characteristics of the One God. In Christianity they became 'Saints'. He also uses the word 'Kamite' for 'Egyptian' since Egypt was known as The Black Land, i.e. KEMET or KAMET.