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The following is excerpted from Embodying Osiris, the Secrets of Alchemical
Transformation, available from Quest Books.
Is the Middle East ready for the hard work involved in establishing a form of democracy
befitting their needs and desires? How will Europe and the United States -- despite its
rhetoric -- accommodate wholesale democratic change in the Middle East? These are afew critical questions facing this region as the old guard falls and the promise of new
governmental structures are in the offing. Events are moving quickly, perhaps faster than
these significant developments require. Revising constitutions, forming transitional
governments, establishing democratic institutions in lands that are, for better or worse,
not used to the workings that insure lasting individual freedom requires more than a
revolution. Instead, there needs to be a gradual evolution in the consciousness of people;
old habits are hard to change.
Egypt is a country founded on countless coups, foreign occupation and annexation. It is a
country with a rich cultural tradition that young Egyptians would do well to study and
learn from the remnants of their great history. Let us not forget that Egypt was the cradle
of civilization, a society that maintained continuous government for some three thousand
years. In ancient times, the pharaoh served not only as an autocrat, in charge of virtually
every aspect of society, but he also mediated between the gods and his people. In many
cases, the pharaoh was a god. We witnessed this same sentiment in Mubarak's final
speech in which he counseled his children to go home to their mothers. The reaction led
to his resignation, a prescription that accords with an old expression, "the king must die
in order for the son to be born."
History tells us that the radical pharaoh Akhenaton sought to change some 1300 years of
tradition by suddenly redefining the king's role. He simultaneously elevated the value of
the individual and the family while essentially demoting all their gods, save one. Aten,
the sun god, was installed as the one and only god above all others. This radical changehinted at the beginning of monotheism in a land that had practiced polytheism for
thousands of years. This was not just a conceptual shift, but one that basically dismissed
familiar gods and long held religious customs. It's easy enough to decree a change, but
to win the hearts and minds of people requires a time of adjustment and voluntary
accommodation.
Even while granting greater personal freedoms, ones never before enjoyed by common
Egyptians, Akhenaten's reign was met with ambivalence, suspicion and ultimately,
sabotage. It was as if god had released the people from bondage, but rather than
jubilation, people were disoriented; they missed their traditions, their old way of life, the
old gods. Not having taken the time to slowly introduce a revised mythology that allowed
people to gradually accept this new concept of individual freedom, Akhenaten'sexperiment failed miserably. His reign lasted only seventeen years and was quickly
dismantled following his death. Still, the seeds of individual freedom had been lodged in
the collective psyche and after many thousands of years they are beginning to bloom.
What follows is an excerpt from my latest book, Embodying Osiris, that describes the
psychology of revolution/evolution that took place some 4000 years ago. Myth and
history offer lessons to those in Tahrir Square. Penning longed-for freedoms on a piece
of cardboard amidst the surrounding revolt certainly inspires and ignites the passions of
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a suppressed people. But it is much more difficult to integrate these reforms and create
institutions that will maintain them. For all those well intended people in that tent each
has his or her own agenda -- a diversity that must ultimately reckon with the paradox of
the One and the Many. A new narrative is required, one that speaks to the people in their
own diverse language; a language that has a common voice. While the victory of
revolution is awe-inspiring, it creates an inflation that blinds its freedom fighters to thepotential consequences of rapid change.
Egypt, being a model for the Middle East, needs wise leaders who understand the
dynamics of cultural transition. These are special people who know the old myths. They
know why, for instance, Seth -- that fiery militant god whose claim to Osiris' throne was
rejected -- was never killed. In the matrix of good governance both Seth and the civil
minded Horus are needed. Each has his place at the table; strength and deliberation
must be balanced. Otherwise, for all the excitement that the overthrow of the old guard
(god) has brought, chaos rather than democracy may follow. The Middle East is at a
tipping point where patience, good leadership and insight into lessons learned from myth
and history can tilt the scales in a favorable direction.
The new mythology that sprang up with Akhenaten's reign maintained that both living
and dead simply sank into sleep each night and awakened to the rays of the morning sun.
In future, it was to be Aten, and sometimes Akhenaten, to whom the living and dead
would turn in prayer and adulation, since the king and his god had become their eternal
caretaker. This revolutionary change had a disquieting effect on the people, and, for the
most part, Akhenaten's effort essentially failed. His failure was due in large part to the
fact that his mythology was incomplete.
As we now know, individuation is a process founded upon integrating light and shadow,
Self and ego, Osiris and Seth. "The concept of an all-encompassing God must necessarily
include his opposite," writes Jung, "the principle of the coincidence of opposites musttherefore be completed by that of absolute opposition in order to attain full paradoxicality
and hence psychological validity." In this case, Self, in the form of Aten, was given sole
authority. Had Akhenaten figured the dark gods, like Osiris, more prominently into his
mythology it may have gained greater acceptance. Although Akhenaten's reign lasted
only seventeen years and old traditions were quickly restored following his death, it had,
I believe, a lasting effect on the Egyptian psyche.
In Aldred's view, Akhenaten's "creed reveals an attempt to rationalize beliefs that had
developed accretions from prehistoric times. It sought to establish the relationship of the
dead with the living, and mankind and all the natural world with a unique, invisible and
self-created god." Rationalized beliefs were a modern concept that not only contradicted
the common belief in many gods, but now also called for individuals to think forthemselves. Gone was the underworld where the weight of one's soul determined a
person's fate. With Akhenaten we have the first stirrings of conscience and with it the
need for redemption. This complexity came by proclamation, not through the gradual
introduction of a new mythological narrative. Aten was singled out as the ultimate
celestial authority, and all other gods were reduced in importance. Akhenaten took a bold
step that theologians before him had avoided: he declared the existence of one true God.
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The Egyptians, says Siegfried Morenz, "avoided liquidating individual gods but did not
remain content with building up a hierarchical pantheon; they boldly went on to advance
the theory that behind the plurality of gods there was a basic unity." Akhenaten named
this unity Aten.
People were simply not prepared to make the leap, although surely some blindly accepted
Akhenaten, while others tolerated him and still others feigned allegiance for monetarygain. Soon after the king's death came a flurry of rededications aimed at reviving the old
order. But a process had begun that could not be changed. Today, we would refer to it as
the individuation process, which holds that in every man, woman, and child is an
instinctive urge toward the growth of individuality. No longer was assurance of physical
survival and evolution enough, for henceforth an unconscious process of involution had
seeded itself in the human psyche. A new dimension of personal, psychological depth
was added to the ancient eschatology of the Old Kingdom. With Akhenaten, no longer
was the world a mass of selfobjects, but instead the possibility of an individual psyche
emerged, one that was private and separate from the collective, consisting of a conscious
and unconscious domain.
. . .
I further contend that a critical evolution in cognitive development, a gradual shift from
concrete to abstract thought, explains the emergence of an individual psyche. In
alchemical language, abstract cognition is the separatio that allowed Akhenaten to isolate
the one god from the many. This kind of sophisticated symbolic thinking was far more
than the average Egyptian was used to. While the populous feared that many thousands of
other gods would perish, the truth is that this radical change represented an introjection of
the gods into the unconscious. In fact, they did not die; instead, a long process began in
which external gods transformed into interior archetypes. In a sense, the old gods, like
Osiris, had resurrected.
Many thousands of years would pass before the Osiris myth evolved to the point thatpeople came to understand the gods of the Ennead as psychological entities rather than
immortal deities. This shift in consciousness began, I believe, with the fall of Akhenaten.
Thereafter, the Book of the Dead was no longer a guidebook meant strictly to serve the
deceased, but slowly became an instruction manual for the living. To be sure, the myth of
Osiris was never a static document, but rather changed according to political necessity
and, over the course of many thousands of years, responded to the psychological
exigencies of the collective unconscious. In the earliest times, Osiris was a common god,
as were all the gods of the Ennead. He was the god of the dead; Horus the Elder, the
herald of creation; Seth, god of storms and thunder; and Isis, an aspect of the Great
Mother. But, since individuation involves movement from simplicity to forms of ever-
greater complexity, these gods could no longer maintain their singular place in theEgyptian pantheon. The simple merging of gods was not sufficient symbolically to
convey the complexity emerging in the development of consciousness. For now, a shift
was occurring that required a calculus of change separating the individual from the body
politic. This shift involved a gradual redefinition of the person from one viewed as a
function of something other than him- or herself to someone having all the vicissitudes of
an inner world.
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...
We are beholding mysteries that Egyptian priests worshipped and alchemists intuited. We
are embodying the kind of divine consciousness that was formally possessed exclusively
by pharaohs. The difference is that divine consciousness today is not mediated by heka
[magic]; rather, it is accomplished through a combination of empathic engagement with
the gods (archetypes) and advanced psychological processes. A whole new philosophy ofembodiment has spawned areas of research that are shaping today's world.
Much of these contemporary advances stem from the history and mythology studied in
this book. A wise old saying makes this point: "Yesterday's magic is tomorrow's science."
And, in fact, magic played a crucial role in the radical transition from an unconscious
collective to the gradual awakening of individual consciousness. Early Egyptians must
have marveled at the transformations appearing in plain view when wheat and barley
were changed into bread and the juice of the vine into a spiritual elixir. This magic
depended less on a god's favor than on the knowledge one possessed in the kitchen.
Channeling the Nile's floodwaters, irrigating the soil, stockpiling seed, and strategic
harvesting, all seemingly simple tasks, were actions that replaced magical commands
with a practical means of marshalling nature's power.
Osiris and Isis taught people how to use the Nile to cultivate their fields. This knowledge
marked a significant advancement in the development of consciousness. For with the
means of producing one's own food, the gods weren't something out there that came of
their own will and in their own time to provide for the people. What had been a divine
power was now, to some extent, in the hands of farmers, bakers, and cooks. With self-
sufficiency, people were less dependent on the state; filled storehouses established a
healthy market for trade and commerce. At the same time, one's spiritual destiny was no
longer a function of the pharaoh, but rather every person had direct access to God (Aten)
-- a major change in how his or her fate in the afterlife would be determined.
As a result, the great gods became increasingly more abstract and their role in thisalchemical process more important. Osiris had been a god of the dead, but he now
represents the god of change and becoming -- an alchemical god much in the likeness of
Mercurius. Seth was no longer just the god of thunder and storms; he now becomes the
nightly slayer of Apopis, the serpentine enemy of consciousness. Isis emerges not only as
wife and sister, but also as mother and even as a creator goddess who re-members and
animates her dead husband. Horus the Elder appears to merge with the younger Horus,
together establishing a vital new order on earth. Horus comes to represent the new man
who rules with an earthly authority founded upon his father's sovereignty in the
underworld. It is possible that the idea of the new man, the second Adam, derives from
Horus, for in him we find the seminal traits elaborated much later by other groups: the
Cabbalists with their concept of Adam Kadmon, the Gnostics with their doctrine of theAnthropos, and the alchemists with theirfilius philosophorum, the first "man of light" --
Mercurius. More generally, what I am describing is the formation of a psychological
world where gods become archetypes and the dark underworld, the earliest beginning of a
personal unconscious.
Had Jung pursued his research in this area further, he would not only have found
evidence to support his theory of individuation, but would certainly have discovered the
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earliest structuring of the human psyche. With his genius, he certainly might have
provided encyclopedic evidence that Ra is the personification of the Self. No doubt he
would have gone further and found Horus to be the prototype for the ego archetype and
Seth, the shadow archetype. Osiris would prove to be theprima materia that transforms
from a passive, undifferentiated state to a perfected image of the philosopher's stone.
While Jung relied principally on medieval alchemy, I believe he might more profitablyhave turned to ancient Egypt where the Royal Art was born and cultivated.
Consciousness is a continuous process of unfolding, punctuated by dislocations and
reunions; the Osiris myth marks many of the key points in this evolution. Indeed, it is apriceless alchemical myth of existence given to us by nature and sculpted by humankind.
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