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I have always been fascinated by looking at the night sky. Little did I know the impact of the Heavens would have upon theology.
In recent times, western scientists congratulated themselves on their discovery of how the universe was created. Their clue came from when they noticed that all the galaxies are all moving away from us, and that a galaxy that is five times farther away than another is going five times as fast; ten times farther, ten times as fast, and so on. This led to the conclusion that there must have been a time in the past when all the matter of the universe was packed tightly together, to an infinite density. This matter is described by scientists as a very stiff neutron soup, where there are neither electrons nor protons, and only neutrons forming one huge extremely dense nucleus. Such a condition exists in the small star companion of Sirius called Sirus B. Only recently in this generation have scientists been able to see Sirus B but yet the ancients knew of its existence and connected Sirus B as the home of the Elohim. More on that later or if you are interested you might wish to read The Sirus Mystery by Robert Temple.
Every Egyptian creation text begins with the same basic belief, that before the beginning of things, there was a primeval abyss of water, everywhere, endless, and without boundaries or directions. This was unlike any sea, for there was neither up nor down - only an endless, deep, dark, infinite abyss. Egyptians called this watery chaos Nun. The name Nun is what modern scientists now call neutron soup, i.e. the unpolarized state of matter.
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that Nun is the "father" of Joshua, the cognitive name for "Jesus", the "Christ", which is the Mind of God? We cannot go there yet but don't forget that Mind is the manifestation of God in the Cosmos.
About fifteen billion years ago, the act of creation occurred. When suddenly, all the matter exploded and expanded outward. This is referred to as the Big Bang, which marked the creation of all the energy and matter of the universe. The same expansion of the universe continues to this day, where the faster matter is traveling farther out.
The Big Bang was a violent and hot explosion, like a great fireball which sends out flashes of light. Because the light from that fireball is still speeding through the universe, we are being bathed in this light, night and day. This light has been traveling to us, on earth, ever since the Big Bang, fifteen billion years ago. In all that time, it has cooled down and slowly changed color, from yellow to orange to red to dull red, and finally to a color our eyes do not detect. Although we cannot see it with our eyes, it can be detected by a special kind of receiver. It is called microwave radiation, since what was once light energy has now become a kind of heat energy.
The Big Bang theory, which sees the creation of the universe as a physical event, was presented thousands of years ago in the Egyptian texts, whereby the FIRST CAUSE (God), in regarding himself, created the universe out of Nun, the primeval waters. The fiery explosion was personified in the form of God known to the Egyptians as "Ptah".
Now this is very important. Since Einstein's relativity
theory, it has been known and accepted that all matter is a form of energy, a coagulation
or condensation of energy. In this light, the material universe is
basically a hierarchy of energies, at different orders of
density. Our senses have some access to the densest
form of energy, which is "matter". This hierarchy of energies is interrelated, each level
sustained by the level above and below it. The ancients described this
hierarchy of "Living Energies" in a ladder motif; we are more
familiar with it today as the Kabbalah but ancient Egypt had it first as seen
on the image on the left.
Now enter the Neteru (gods, goddesses). This hierarchy of "Living Energies" was reflected in the personification of these invisible "Living Energies" which ancient Egypt called the neteru (gods, goddesses) in ancient Egypt, where material and spiritual realities were understood as aspects of a single scheme or single First Cause (God); as manifestations of the One First Cause known to them as God.
The material world was generally thought of as an aspect of the Spiritual (energy) world. You could say that the Egyptians understood God as the sum of all energy in the Cosmos that manifested Himself or emanated from Himself both the "visible" and the "invisible" manifestation of these "Living Energies" in this hierarchial "pattern". God was for them understood as SPIRIT (invisible) but as conscious "Living ENERGY" as well. This energy they called "God" whom was manifested in forms of "matter" that were both visible and invisible.
The origin of the world and the nature of the neteru (gods), who took part in its creation, were subjects of constant interest to the Egyptians.
The Egyptian cosmology and creation myths, regarding the universe, were divided into four separate but complementary teachings, each with its center located in a different city.
Let us take time for a second to reflect upon what we learned previously about the use of "myth" to carry truth. To the Egyptians "myth" was an intentionally chosen means for communicating knowledge and truth. Myth dramatized cosmic laws, principles, processes, forces, relationships and functions, and expressed them in an easy to understand way. The Priests and Priesthoods dealt with the technical knowledge and simplified this to the common people in myth, allegory, metaphor, and symbolism on a level that could easily be understood by all. The same is done today by the sages of Judaism and clergy in Christianity. Not everyone is called to higher study but deserve the truth as well. It bears repeating that meaning and the mystic experience are not tied to a LITERAL interpretation of events. A myth has no historical value. Once the inner meanings of the myth have been revealed to the common man, they become marvels of simultaneous scientific and philosophical completeness and consciousness. The more they are studied, the richer they become. And, rooted in the myth as it is, the part can never be mistaken for the whole, nor can its functional significance be forgotten or distorted.
The Egyptian religious centers at Heliopolis, Memphis, Thebes and Hermopolis did not represent separate and competitive cults, nor a political or social federation. Rather, each center revealed one of the principle phases or aspects of the Egyptian understanding of God and Creation. These Egyptian teachings, at each of these religious centers, are to be viewed correspondingly to the detailed versions of the various stages of creation, outlined in the opening chapter of book of Genesis. Let us never forget that the understanding of Creation as understood by the Egyptians was the source from which all other nations would received their understanding of Creation; even the Jews. Egypt understood, as detailed later in their children's accounts of Creation in Genesis (the Jewish nation comes from intermarriage of Egypt and Semites), God created heaven and earth, divided the waters, created the light, and gave life to animals and man.
There were no contradictions between the teachings of the four centers. One center may refer to Ptah, as the Creator and another may refer to Ra, as the Creator. Remember that these epitaths, like Ptah and Ra, are but attributes of the One True God. They, and others in the Egyptian hierarchy of neteru, are representations of different levels and/or different aspects of God's operation in Creation. Each situation determined which aspect/level (Ptah, Ra, ...) was appropriate for that particular case. In our daily life, we can find an adult man who is a creator of his children, just like his father who also was a creator. They both represent different levels of the creation aspect.
The following is a simplified outline of the Egyptian creation account, of the universe, which is compiled from the various teachings of the four centers. Please take time to notice that Ptah, Ra, etc, are just personifications of cosmic functions & "Living Energies" & powers that find their origin in what we call God. I have explained in a prior article dealing with Egypt and their understanding that mankind was created in the image of God. I direct your attention to this article that explains that this whole concept that mankind was "created in the image of God" finds its origin with Egypt. That being the case then understand as well that the Egyptian mythology was based on the fact that man, as the image of God, represented the created image of all creation. Man was the microcosm of the macrocosm. As such, the complicated scientific and philosophical information were reduced to events, on human images and terms. This facilitated understanding of such profound concepts that were known primarily to the Priesthoods and filtered down to the common people.
Every Egyptian creation text starts with the same basic belief, that before the beginning of things, there was a primeval abyss of water, endless, and without boundaries or directions. This chaos possessed characteristics which were identified with four pairs of primordial powers/forces. Each pair represents the masculine/ feminine aspect which precedes creation which again finds its origin in God. As you might already know in the Hebrew Bible the names for God are both "feminine and masculine." Again this concept of the masculinity and femininity of God finds its origin in Egypt long before the Jewish nation. The Jewish people learned this from them. The four pairs were given the names Night, Obscurity, Secret and Eternity, but they might as well be the mythological/philosophical names for the four forces of the universe (the weak force, the strong force, gravity, and electromagnetism).
Answer for yourself: If you have all "matter" at one point existing for all eternity in the primeval abyss, why should it all of a sudden change? Well you will have to ask the Creator about that.
Egyptians reasoned that one could explain creation not from within creation, but only from outside it. In the Egyptian papyrus known as the Leyden Papyrus, the neter (god) Amen (which means hidden or invisible) represents the hidden or secret force underlying creation. Amen is the Breath of Life. A better understanding of this might be the more familiar word "SPIRIT." Even though God is indefinable Himself, He is the reason why the universe can be defined. Egypt understood that it was God who moved upon the face of the water or this tightly packed density or matter or neutrons which is understood again as this neutron soup. God, in the form of Amen, the invisible God, moved and acted upon this unpolarized state of matter.
It stands to reason that before taking any action, that one must initially think and plan for such action. The same is true for God in His upcoming Creation. As such, the first step to start creation, was for this First Cause, called God, to conceive in His own heart (which is, in cosmic terms, the seat of intellect, mind, conscience) the concept of the multiple separations, partitions, divisions, and refinements within this Creation that reflect Order out of the one. God began to separate apart one from the other within this Creation. God divided apart His Creation and created separations and boundaries within it. These eventually became separate life forms can be thought of as Divine beings that came from this primeval abyss of water or neutron soup. This to Egypt was the Big Bang.
The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, dating from about 312 B.C., The Book of Smiling Down Apop (Apophis), states:
I conceived in my own heart; there came into being a vast number of forms of divine beings as the forms of children and the forms of their children.
After conceiving and planning the idea of creation, one must show the will and desire to act. For Egypt, God, the First Cause, manifested the desire to create, in human terms, by His fist. The fist symbolizes physical and spiritual powers. This was the beginning of anthropomorphism. Simply said anthropomorphism is the attributing to God of human attributes in order to make God more humanely understandable. Thus God "speaks" or "walk" and has a "fist" or "sees," etc., just the way mankind does.
This was stated in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus:
I it was who aroused desire with my fist.
Try to understand that the build up of purely physical forces which caused the Big Bang, was equated, in human terms by the Egyptians, to an erect phallus, and the act of masturbation. Masturbation is the same as building up of physical forces which led to the Big Bang. Its another explanation of the same thing. The Egyptian text in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus states:
I masturbated with my hand.
Science has taught us today what the Egyptians only surmised; namely,
that the very life force itself resides in
the male's sperm and the female's egg. When combined life is
created and the Creation process continues and expands in only a smaller way as
seen paralleled on a much larger scale through the expansion of the moving
Cosmos in space. For Egypt, this
condensed energy, in the highly dense matter, was symbolized by the
principle/neter (god) Ptah, the coagulating fire, bound by the neter (god) Set,
(principle of contraction) in the matter. Such was symbolized
eloquently: in Egypt, Ptah, the creator of all divine forms, was depicted as
imprisoned, bound in swaddling clothes, with only head, hands and feet free.
Ptah
The metaphysical revolt of the spirit against its imprisonment in matter, which created the universe, was manifested verbally with Ptah's tongue. Ptah's commands were realized through Tehuti (the personification of the divine tongue of God-anthropomorphism) who gave names to the divine beings which resulted from the Big Bang. The Egyptian texts state that the created universe came out of the mouth, and the mouth was the symbol of Unity, the One, in hieroglyphs. Simply said God spoke the Creation into existence through the Divine Word; later to be understood as the Logos.
The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus describes the fiery explosion (Big Bang) from the mouth, just like the lava coming out of the volcanos mouth:
I it was who aroused desire with my fist; I masterbated with my hand, and I spat it from my own mouth.
Ptah, the coagulating fire is therefore the simultaneous cause (of the created world) and effect (of the scission). His role is stated in the Egyptian Coffin Texts, Spell 1130:
I am the Lord of fire who lives on Truth.
Ptah caused the neter (god) Atum to appear on the primordial mound. Atum was understood to represent the active faculties of Ptah, by which creation was achieved. These faculties were intelligence, which was identified with the heart and personified as Heru (Horus) and will, which was identified with the tongue and personified as Tehuti (Thoth). This intelligence and will found expression in this Energy we call God the Creator; otherwise known as Spirit.
We mentioned earlier that scientists today, as well as Egypt before, knew that the Universe is constantly expanding like ripples on a pond from a rock. The Big Bang continued, which was symbolized by Atum masturbating, and his first children (divine beings) were the result of that action. Atum's children were the twin divine beings;
Once the atmosphere was created, it was possible for Shu and Tefnut to beget;
...who by virtue of their separation, caused the space in which life could take place on earth. The Egyptian text in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus describes the new life on earth:
I came forth from among the roots (meaning vegetation) and I created all creeping things, and all that exists among them.
To produce the required elements, for the creation of mankind on earth, in metaphysical, not actual terms, the Egyptians showed Geb, who personified the principle of material fertilization with his phallus directed at the umbilical chord (not at the sex organ) of Nut, female and the matrix of creation. Thus the separation of heaven and earth is simultaneously cause and effect.
Geb and Nut then produced:
The first couple, Asar and Aset (Osiris and Isis) personified to the Egyptians the cyclical phenomena of life-death-renewal. To the Egyptians God was speaking to them through His Creation. Through this repeated separation in Creation and subsequent division from division in different forms of matter that was being divided from each other God was bringing ORDER out of DISORDER and CHAOS. In so doing the Egyptians understood that God was establishing Divine Laws that operated in Creation and they understood as well that such Laws had an impact not only upon Nature but themselves as well. Egypt saw these Divine Laws operating in repeating cycles and patterns that not only repeated themselves in the Heavens above but in Nature all around them. The Seasons of birth in the Spring as Mother Nature exploded in new life was followed by Summer's maturity of grow which was followed by the death of such life in the Autumn and Winter. This was followed again by rebirth of the same in the following Spring. Birth, life, death, and rebirth was seen as operational in Divine Law. These same Divine Laws were seen operating in Heaven above with the movement of the stars and Sun and their impact and influence upon Nature was noted as a secondary aspect of these Heavenly Laws. Later mankind saw these same Laws operating in the Heavens above operating in their bodies as typified by the cycle of the new moon and the nodes of the moon. They also saw that the gestation their children followed exactly the Divine Laws operating concerning the path of the Sun from the Spring Equinox to the Winter Solstice. God was speaking the same message over and over to them through the Heavens, Nature, and within themselves: I am the Creator of birth, life, death, and rebirth. In these repetitive Divine Laws of the Creator Egypt saw Divine Order and patterned their whole civilization and culture and lives upon such Divine Order as reflected in Divine Laws. In this way we can understand the role of Osiris and Isis not as literal people but personifications of this Divine Order and Divine Cycle of life-death-renewal which Egypt saw above them, around them, and within them. Egypt understood that God was not only speaking to them that He gives life, sustains life, destroys life, but renews life as well. From this they further understood the recycling of such life and life after death was just part of the cycle spoken to them by God by His Divine Laws operating in Heaven, Nature, and their own bodies.
The second couple, Set and Nebt-het (Seth and Nephthys) personified the principle of opposition. So, the Egyptian reasoned that nine forces/energies/ neteru/gods, call them as you wish, caused the creation of man on earth.
Answer for yourself: And why not? Does it not take nine months to create a human child from conception to birth? This Egyptian mythological mystery play exhibits well thought-out, coherent and rational thinking.
The nine created neteru (gods) formed the Divine Ennead. In later texts, the Ennead (i.e. company of nine) was often regarded as a single divine entity. As a result of this system, we find the Ennead represented as a figure of Shu, standing and supporting with his hands, the out-stretched body of Nut, with Geb lying at his feet.
Ptah was considered to be the Heart (the seat of the conceiving mind, the conscience) and Tongue (the seat of creative intellectual utterance) of the Ennead. In short, Ptah thought (as heart) and commanded (as tongue) everything that He desired (with his fist). In addition to the Ennead, Ptah also gave to all other neteru (gods), and to each organism in the universe, a heart and a tongue with hidden powers, in order to remember the primeval creation and to visualize the persistence of his work. The heart and tongue of Ptah were identified with Heru (Horus) and Tehuti (Thoth), a sun - and a moon-neter (god), thus stressing his universal character. In the Shabaka Stele (Eight Century B.C.) we read:
The Great Ptah, who is the heart and tongue of the Ennead. There came into being as the heart, and there came into being as the tongue, the form of Atum. Ptah is the Great and Mighty One, who has given the bounty of his power to all the neteru (gods) and to their divine essences through this heart and this tongue. Heru (Horus) and Tehuti (Thoth) came into being through them as Ptah.
Answer for yourself: Now that was not too hard was it not?
Let us end this article with the following thought. We saw that God created the Universe with his commanding voice or word. In effect, within God is contained the potential existence of all things, and when He spoke, He and all things with Him came into objective existence. The Egyptian Book of the Coming Forth By Day (wrongly and commonly translated as the Book Of The Dead), the oldest written text in the world, states:
I am the Eternal...I am that which created the Word...I am the Word...
In Ancient Egypt, the WORDS of Ptah, revealed through Teshut (Thoth...the equivalent to Hermes, or Mercury), became the things and creatures of this world, i.e., the words (meaning sound waves, vibrational waves) of the Creator who created the elements of this Universe. Let us now consider this "Word" which is currently known today as the Logos.
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