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Greetings friends and members of the Oracle Forum community. As the modern world continues to deteriorate, perhaps a journey back to the wisdom of the ancient world in alphabetic to numeric translation. Follow the signposts in the content of the following posts in the topic thread through the link below which presents a revelatory trail created by David Denison founder, content architect and creator of 973-eht-namuh-973.com.
Enjoy your journey of retroactive interest to that ancient Egyptian funerary text ‘Book of the Dead’. Examine the numbers closely. Redbeck
Page 243] omega, in administering the law which their religious sense had divinized for human use; and its supreme type, erected at the pole, in the equinox, or the Hall of Judgment, was the pair of scales at perfect equipoise, for with them the equilibrium of the universe was dependent on eternal equity.
It may look like taking a flying leap in the dark to pass from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, but whencesoever Bunyan derived the tradition, the Pilgrim's Progress contains all outline of the matter in the Egyptian Ritual. Christian personates the Manes on his journey through the nether earth, with the roll in his hand containing the word of life. The escape from the City of Destruction may be seen in the escape of the deceased from the destruction threatened in Amenta, when he exclaims. “I come from the lake of flame, from the lake of fire and from the field of flame” (ch. 98). The wicket-gate corresponds to the secret doorway of the mysteries; the “Slough of Despond” to the marshes in the mythos; the “Hill Difficulty” to the Mount of Ascent up which the Osiris climbs with “his staff in his hand”. The Manes forgets his name; Christian forgets his roll, the roll that was his guide book for the journey and his passport to the celestial city. The prototypal valley of the shadow of death is the Aar-en-tet in Amenta. This is the valley of darkness and death (Rit., ch. 19; 13, 6). The Ritual says, “Let not the Osiris advance into the valley of darkness” where the twice-dead were buried for ever by the great annihilator Seb. The monster Apap is the original Apollyon. The equipment of Christian in his armour for his conflict \with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation is one with the equipment of the Osiris, who enters the valley “glorious and well equipped” for the battle with his adversary the dragon. The fight of Christian and Apollyon is identical \with the contest between Ra and Apap. All the time of his struggle Apollyon fought with yells and hideous roarings; Apap with “the voice of strong bellowings ” (Rit., ch. 39). Christian passes by the mouth of hell; the Osiris passes by the ten hells, with all of them, as it were, making mouths at him for their prey. There are two lions at the gate of the Palace Beautiful, and in the Ritual the two lions crouch at the beautiful gate of exit from Amenta (Vig. to ch. 18). The waters of the river of life, the green meadows, the delectable mountains, the land of Beulah, the paradise of peace, the celestial city on the summit, all belong to the mythology of Hetep or the Mount of Glory-a bare outline, the mere skeleton of which has been clothed at different times in various forms, including this of the Pilgrim's Progress. Possibly Bunyan the tinker derived the tradition from those travelling tinkers the gipsies. However this may be, the Egyptian Ritual is the verifiable source of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
Many illustrations might also be given to show that the mysteries of Amenta, which were finally summed up as “Osirian”, have been carried to the other side of the world. In the mythology of the [Page 244] aborigines of New Holland, “Grogoragally, the divine son, is the active agent of his father, who immovably presides over all nature (like Osiris, the mummy god of the motionless heart). The son watches the actions of men, and quickens the dead immediately upon their earthly interment. He acts as mediator for the souls to the great god, to whom the good and bad actions of all are known. His office is chiefly to bring at the close of every day the spirits of the dead from all parts of the world to the judgment-seat of his father, where alone there is eternal light. There he acts as intercessor for those who have only spent some portion of their lives in wickedness. Bayma, listening to the mediation of his son, allows Grogoragally to admit some such into Ballima, “or heaven (Manning, Notes on the Aborigines of New Holland, Sydney, 1883, copy from the author). Grogoragally is one with the hawk-headed Horus, the paraclete or advocate who pleads for the Manes before the judgment-seat of his father. Again, the aborigines of the McDonnell Ranges have a tradition that the sky was at one time inhabited by three persons. One of these was a woman, one was a child who always remained a child and never developed beyond childhood; the third was a man of gigantic stature called Ulthaana-that is a spirit. He had an enormous foot shaped like that of an emu. When a native dies he is said to ascend to the home of Ulthaana the spirit (Gillen, Notes, Horn Expedition,
This is a far-off folk tale that may be traced back home to the Egyptian myth. In this Child-Horus never developed beyond childhood, and so remained the eternal child. This was Horus of the incarnation who made his transformation into the Horus that rose again as the adult, the great man, Horus in . spirit, the prototype of “Ulthaana”. The bird type is repeated. Horus has the head of the hawk, as a figure of the man in spirit;. Ulthaana, as a spirit, has the foot of an enormous emu.
The Arunta also have a kind of Amenta or world of spirits under ground. About fourteen miles to the south of Alice Springs there is a cave in a range of hills which rises to the north. This cave, like all others in the range, is supposed to be occupied by the Iruntarinia or spirit individuals, each one of whom is in reality the double of one of the ancestors of the tribe who lived in the Alcherinf!a. The individual spirits are supposed to live within the cave in perpetual sunshine and among streams of running water, as in the Egyptian meadows of Aarru. Here, as in Amenta, the reconstitution of the deceased takes place. Within the cave the Iruntarinia remove all the internal organs, and provide the man with a completely new set, after which operation has been successfully performed he presently comes to life again, but in a condition of insanity. This, however, is of short duration, and the coming round is equivalent to the recovery of memory by the Manes in the Ritual, when he remembers his name and who he is in the great house of the other world (Spencer and Gillen, p. 525). There are bird-souls also in this nether earth, which are favoured with unlimited supplies of down or undattha, with which they are fond of decorating their bodies as spirits.The mysteries of Amenta are more or less extant in the totemic ceremonies of the Central Australians at a more rudimentary stage of development, which means, according to the present reading [Page 245] of the data, that the same primitive wisdom was carried out from the same central birthplace in Africa to the islands of the Southern Sea, and there fossilized during long ages of isolation, which had been carried down the Nile to take living root and grow and flourish as the mythology and eschatology of ancient Egypt.
In the mysteries of Amenta the deceased is reconstructed from seven constituent parts or souls in seven stages of development.Corresponding to these in the Arunta mysteries, seven “status-terms are applied to the initiate”. (1) He is called Ambaquerka up to the time of his being tossed in the air. (2) He is Ulpmerka until taken to the circumcision ground. (3) He is the Wurtja during the time betwixt being painted for it and the actual performance of the ceremony. (4) He is Arakurta betwixt the operations of circumcision and sub-incision. (5) He is Ertwa-kurka after circumcision until he passes through the ordeal by fire. (6) Following this he is called IIlpongwurra, and (7) after passing through the engwurra he is designated Urliara. (Spencer and Gillen, N. T., p. 638.) In the mysteries of Amenta the mouth of the resuscitated spirit is opened and the silence of death is broken when the lips are touched by the sacred implement in the hands of Ptah.It is said in the “ceremony of opening the mouth”, “Let my mouth be opened by Ptah with the instrument of ba-metal with which he openeth the mouths of the gods” (ch. 23). The Arunta also perform the ceremony of opening the mouth by touching it with a sacred object when the initiates are released from the ban of silence (Spencer and Gillen, pp. 382, 385). A mystery of the resurrection is acted by the Arunta in the quabarra ingwurninga inkinja, or corroborree of the arisen bones, which bones imaged the dead body, whilst the performers represented the Ulthaana or spirits of the dead (p.473). The bones were sacredly preserved by those who were as yet unable to make the mummy as a type of permanence.