Hello all,
I decided to put together and share some of my favourite extracts from the Book of Going Forth (Book of the Dead). I’ve given them titles to help categorise them. While meant primarily as a guide to navigating the afterlige, the passages can also provide food for thought as well as comfort. I intend to add a drawing to each one but this will take time.
They’ve given me a bit of comfort over the past week or so and I hope you find them as thought provoking as I do.
Blessed be
Alan
Triumph over Death
The past has been rolled
into a scroll I shall not see again.
The eye of the hawk is unblinking.
Open. Shut. Perfect.
I rise like the sun above olive trees,
like the moon above date palms.
Where there is light, I shall be.
Where there’s darkness, there’s none of me.
I rise like the moon above date palms.
I am counted as one among stars.
Beam of light, sun and moon.
Shining beast, man and woman.
I am passing through.
Come outside among the people.
I am light. Gaze on me.
Moon in darkness, sun in morning.
Light is what I will on earth,
along the Nile,
among the people.
I have traveled through the tomb,
dark and lonely ground.
I am here now.
I have come.
I see.
In the underworld,
I embraced my father.
I have burned away his darkness.
I am his beloved.
I have killed the snake.
I have given him meat.
I walk in my sleep,
through earth and heaven.
Watched from Above
The night sun rests
in the lap of a bear,
dreaming in the northern sky.
A half-moon, I shine above the legs.
I come forth from the edge of heaven.
I climb to the deepest pit of the sky
and rest above cooling rocks,
above houses in the cities
and people who sleep,
under a half-moon, dreaming.
Oh, I am weak and feeble,
at the sight of my loved ones sleeping.
I am weak and feeble,
gliding in cloudless dark.
Forgetful of the teeth and tongues of snakes,
I rest above my homeland dreaming.
Below are my house and cattle.
I grow a little stronger.
My beams of light are arrows,
which wound the night
and drive it back.
I am the eye of a sleeping lion,
who dreams of stalking the fields.
I am a half-moon,
high in the darkness,
a cup of light spilling dreams from the sky.
I must move on
to the furthest edge of heaven.
The wheat in my fields
has sprung up in straight rows.
I am a half-moon in the night,
keeping watch.
I must move on.
Celestial Connections
O starry ones!
I am a by a river, gazing up.
And how these same stars quiver above.
O hawk!
O restless son,
traveling into this season.
The snake writhes in your talons.
Your wings brush the edge of the sky.
Long flight of days,
passing many lands,
death sleeps
among your many feathers.
O soul,
ancient ram!
Come here by the pool to drink.
Two horns of sense and reason,
implanted in your forehead.
Son of the mountain sky.
Dusty hoof,
which tramps an old trail.
O king!
This rock on which we live endures.
Yours is the plumed white crown,
tower of flesh, infused with spirit.
Above, the eye of god is dreaming us.
Below, we are Air and earth
and mist and fire.
To the east
the mountains are singing.
O lord of acacia trees!
whose blooms are the first sensations,
who binds the rags of mummies.
This sad mortality!
The boat is set upon its sledge
and filled with yellow flowers.
O jackal Anubis!
I have passed
through the underworld door.
Nothing grows and nothing dies;
all that was and would be, is.
This life is a singular breath
and your moving eye is time.
Upon the brow of men
the word is writ,
and in their hearts
the word is deed.
Smoke from temples curls like hair.
The ankh in your one hand,
the knife in your other.
The gods have heard my name.
Osiris.
I am by the river, gazing up.
I am the lord of seasons,
of that which falls and returns to light.
I am he who sowed the seed.
I am the bread I have made.
Purpose
Do not leave me to stand idle
and alone in this hall,
surrounded by dreams,
for dreams - however beautiful -
are vapors and desire,
all insubstantial.
Give me hands and mind
and soul and heart.
Give me music, bright star
and some reason to rise and walk.
Flood me with purpose and memory.
Submerge me in living water.
Truth and Liberation
What I hate is ignorance,
smallness of imagination,
the eye that sees no farther
than its own lashes.
All things are possible.
When we speak in love
and live by love,
truth in love will be our comfort.
Who you are is limited
only by who you think you are.
There are those who live
in the boundaries of guilt and fear,
the limits of imagination.
They believe limitation is the world.
You can not change them.
There is work of your own to do.
You will never reach the end
of your own becoming,
the madness of creation,
the joy of existence.
May I know the truth when I see it.
May I stand on the lotus, a son of god, and rise like perfume unto the god’s nostrils. May my fingernails turn into thorns to drive back the snake.
May my arms become spears to thwart crocodiles.
May the light of my soul detect shadows of evil.
May I listen to the voice of the messenger. May I walk the road envisioned by Ra’s eyes.
May my spirit gather my selves and fly back to its source.
May I join the great march of beings who live and die in the circle of light.
Inner Demons
I shall not fall under flashing knives.
I shall not burn up in the cauldron.
I know the names of the scorpions
and they are these:
anger, bitterness and doubt.
And I know the names of the serpents:
ego, concern for the self of the body;
relinquishment of destiny,
the attribution of suffering to god;
false pity that stifles another man’s becoming; mediocre virtues and the denial of passion; sentimentality wherein passion is artifice; satisfaction wherein he fails to attain the great; common thought wherein
a man seeks not to push himself
beyond the limits of his own imagination.
Confronting Shadows
I have seen the face of evil,
one with sharp teeth
like a ravaging dog
that feasts upon corpses,
that swallows hearts,
that vomits and shoots filth
from under its tail.
I have seen his face,
but he has not seen himself.
His name is eater of millions,
envy, jealousy, greed, and lust.
He is the robber of hours,
the passion out of control
that devours life without tasting it,
without being nourished by it.
Then he is born seven times
Into a place where nothing grows.
I have seen the face of evil,
one with a hundred coils in its tail
that would claim for itself whatever it touched:
the perfume of hibiscus,
the heart of a lover,
the light of its days,
the thoughts and passions of others.
It would clutch these things, squeeze them
and suck out their vitality.
Then the snake would rise up
with a shake of its tail
and name itself god, knower of all,
possessed of all wisdom.
“I alone,” it cries,
“know the truth and I shall keep it.”
He is the serpent
that separates men from gods.
I have seen the face of evil,
a face full of burns and scars,
torture inflicted upon the self.
He would scald his own chest
and blame it on others.
He would slash his own wrists
and blame it on the gods.
He is the blamer, the finder of fault.
He is the author of all the ills that befalls him, unrepentant and unconscious.
Blind is he even to the motion of his own hand
that rises up and plucks out his eyes.
Empowerment
Who shall guard us from terrors?
We ourselves and the beating heart of Osiris
and the bones of his back
that make us rise up in truth.
We shall walk with him,
around the edge of the Lake of Fire.
We shall possess the loves,
the words, the bodies we know.
We shall walk glorious in Egypt,
our hearts swelling with passion,
our lungs filled with breath of fire,
all the gods and goddesses,
united in one body.
Now is the day of joining opposites,
of the mingling of the dust of flesh
with the dust of the coffin.
This is the day of flow,
the living ether returned to air,
the maker of forms assuming new form.
This is the day without end-
the passage into light itself,
the joining of Osiris to Ra.
Sacred Journey
I return to the rhythm of water,
to the dark song I was in my mother’s belly.
We were gods then and we knew it.
We are gods now dancing in whirling darkness, spitting flame like stars in the night.
In the womb before the world began,
I was a child among other gods and children who were, or may be, or might have been.
There in the dark when we could not see each other’s faces,
we agreed with one mind to be born,
to separate, to forget the pact we made that we might learn the secrets of our fraternity.
We agreed to know sorrow in exchange for joy, to know death in exchange for life.
We were dark seeds of possibility whispering.
Then one by one we entered alone.
We walked on our legs, and as we had said,
we passed in well-lit streets without recognising each other;
yet we were gods, sheathed in flesh, the multitude of a single spirit.
Gods live even in darkness,
in the world above your heads,
in the crevices of rocks,
in the open palms of strangers.
Enduring Essance
I am a child, the seed in everything,
the rhythm of flowers,
the old story that lingers.
Among cattle and fruit sellers,
I am air.
I am love hidden in a shy maiden’s gown.
I am the name of things.
I am the dream changing before your eyes.
I am my body, a house of blood and breath.
I am man on earth and a god in heaven.
While I travel the deserts in frail form,
while I grow old and weep and die,
I live always as a child in the body of truth,
a blue egg that rocks in the storm
but never breaks.
I sleep in peace in my mother’s lap,
a child mesmerised by sunlight on the river.
My soul is swallowed up by god.
Out of chaos came the light.
Out of the will came life.
Thank you for sharing these! They’re wonderful. I will have to return at some point and elaborate. But I’ve spent all my energy for today already.
