“Ignore, o Asclepius, that Egypt is a copy of the sky, or, rather, the place where move and are projected here below?”
And the tale of Isis and Osiris. But perhaps Lucarelli’s most impressive feature is their devotion and deep respect for what he considered a real sacred art.
Paolo Lucarelli: According to Diodorus Siculus, the Egyptian priests found in their registers the information that Orpheus, Museum, Melampus, Daedalus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Plato, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Democritus had come as disciples on the banks of the Nile (1). Plutarch gave precise information about places and teachers, “… the wisest among the Greeks: Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, Lycurgus, and also … came to Egypt and met with priests. They say that Eudoxus was a disciple of Chnoufis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis of Sais, and Pythagoras of Enufis of Heliopolis. It seems it was especially Pythagoras to remain so impressed and admired of these men, to transfuse their tendency to symbolism and mystery in his doctrines, adapting them to an enigmatic form (2).
Iamblichus confirmed, citing Hermes as master: “.. the ancient stelae of Hermes, which long time ago had been thoroughly studied by Plato and Pythagoras and formed their philosophy …” (3).
Concerning Pythagoras, in particular, this tradition was deeply rooted; it testified to Isocrates, pointing to the Egyptian religion: “If I did not have to rush up, I would say many beautiful things about their piety (of Egyptians), I’m not the only one that sees it or the first, but many have already known, both men of today and people of the past. Among these was Pythagoras of Samos, who went to Egypt and made himself their disciple, first brought to Greece the study of all sorts of philosophy and more than others took care of the sacrifices and religious ceremonies “(4).
We could multiply quotations to evidence that the myth, legend, tradition, or whatever you call it, on an Egypt repository of all the cults and all the sciences was well stabilized at the dawn of our era, to continue in time until very close to our years (5). In opposition, of course, to a myth more robust and highly popular, though not less unlikely, that pretends the human intellect can grow and get out of the darkness only in Greece, around the fifth century BC and spread from there, as a “logos spermatikós ” of incredible fecundity, diffusing art, science, philosophy, and reason in the universe.
We do not comment on either one or the other, lacking consistency and associated with partial views, but restricted. Both have, in some respects, connected with the theory of cycles (6), a limited hermeneutic validity.
We must confess, therefore, that having to make a choice, we are attracted by the image of a repository of sacred knowledge, where you just let it filter out a sigh to generate a thought of art. This would then be the unfathomable mystery of an Egypt that was never revealed and remains untouchable in the millennia.
We now read the hieroglyphics, the “sacred writing”, used continuously and with very slight changes from the beginning of the third millennium to the first century BC. We read, or better, decipher because there is no knowledge of the vocalization of the ancient people who lived in that land which the Greeks called “Aigyptos,” the Egyptian KA-PTAH-HUT, the land of the “Ka” of Ptah (7). We decipher them with unease because it is enough to just depth their lyrics to discover that we do not understand them. Are they so alien to our common thinking?
Just in the first instance, it will be enough the fact that in the language of the people that all described as very religious, you have not found any word to mean “religion” or “devotion” or “faith”. The use, taken from Coptic to translate with “god” or “goddess,” the word NETER (8) also looks pretty questionable: the scholars had to admit that this term probably does not at all correspond to the image or emotion it arouses in us.
The Pythagorean sign represents a painted ax tucked into a long wooden handle, perhaps from stone. The colors show that it was secured with leather straps or ropes. It seems indisputably represented as a weapon and menacing destructive aspect. Perhaps the “power” is its most likely significance, to indicate in what we now call “God”, a particular form of that universal power, eternal and invincible, consistently terrible, which is the basis of the same event.
It remains the curious fact, in a symbolic universe that looks pretty consistent over time, that the more ancient Hermetic Philosophers, until the Middle Ages, represented the same “secret fire” main instrument of the art of Alchemy, but also, particularly embodiment an essential part of the Spirit. This analogy would perhaps make less abstruse or incomprehensible specific liturgical texts of the Egyptian temples, which give detailed instructions on a form of ‘manufacture of the gods, “which must be drawn from heaven to earth in a material medium inevitable and convenient. So in the morning, for example, the priest was to “render God its soul”, that is, fix it in specific ways in the statue or the chosen representation.
Here, again, “soul” for BA is a forced and rough translation if we consider that being an option that only has “dead” and “gods”, and that appears to be their function of embodiment.
Note that in ancient Egyptian did not exist, the vowel “e”; had been introduced to facilitate the pronunciation of words whose vocalization is not known. So it is given, in the plural, the same name as the sacred books of the library or the temples, which are described in the rites or myths in which the imaginary aspects are made visible (9).
Also, the “secret fire” must be “manufactured” by the artist in his/her early works. It can sometimes be depicted as an angel with the symbol of the apostle Matthew whom we owe the Gospel of Science, of Maat, the order-justice-truth opposed to chaos. Daughter of the demiurge, the gods live and love in her. Together with Life, the symbol often correlated (10), represents the element of conservation, particularly the one that should be maintained because the rest continue to be. In hermeticism, we would say it is the saline principle embodiment of every possible source and the crystal order for excellence in nature. The glyph of the goddess shows her squatting: she gave rise to the time and the astrological symbol of Virgo, an earth sign. The composition of the word MAAT appears in the “cubit”, the instrument used to measure. The degrees of fire should be careful, “geometrically,” said the ancient alchemical texts, measured so as not to spoil the Opera.
In that Greece that would not have learned anything from Egypt, Maat was led to the etymology of words involving the ideas of reason and measure, “Mathema,” discipline, science, “mathèmatikós” mathematical “mathesis’, a measure of learning “mathétéuo,” instruct “metron,” measure.
Fantasies badly accommodated to a disappeared mystery. Tat or Thoth, who the Greeks called Hermes Trismegistus, taught: “Ignore, therefore, O Asclepius, that Egypt is a copy of the sky, or, rather, the place where move and are projected here below all the transactions which govern and put to work all the forces of heaven? Indeed, to tell the very truth, our land is the temple of the world. And yet, given that the wises should include all the things to come, there’s one that you need to know. There will come a time when it will seem that the Egyptians have honored their gods in vain, in the piety of their hearts, with regular worship …
The gods, abandoning the land, will return to heaven, and they will leave Egypt, this land, which was the home of the sacred liturgy, now the widow of its gods, no longer enjoys their presence.
“… Then this holiest land, home to shrines and temples, will be completely covered with the dead and their tombs. O Egypt, Egypt, your all cults will not be left than fables, and the same will seem incredible to your posterity, and only the words engraved in stone will survive to tell your acts of mercy .. “(11).
Only “stories” then, and “words of stone “will ambiguously remain to tell the Egyptian wisdom. Myths and symbols, misunderstood iconography, preserved in mysterious ways, submitted to the patient’s senses full of ignorance, proposed to the disbelief of passers-by who mistake them for naive art products or card games. Beautiful walls of pints, imaginative papyrus, descriptions of hell, which we read puzzled, as the facades of cathedrals badly in their comment on hypothetical and meaningless repetition of vices, virtues, and crafts.
Tourists admire the hard work of craftsmanship, scholar desperately tries banal sources to provide peace of mind, the manufacturer denies the most obvious questions, and the ecclesiastic, envious keeper of buildings that do not belong deforms their moral dogmas.
Yet something transpires. Targeted reports, precise guidelines, eerie colors, unusual perspectives, and transparent stories create reasonable doubt. So the honest scholars finally concede to these unbearable Egyptians at least one unique mythopoetic talent. A curious power that allowed, from the very beginning, an unquestionable unity between what we today call “religion” and the physical sciences or natural sciences. So much those phenomena appear interconnected to the myths, the liturgies, that, for convenience of language, we will continue to call “gods”. Finally, it is stated: “… the religious documents were related to a representation of a universe so meticulous and detailed, that religion had to be a real theoretical physics, having in itself all the elements of cosmology, cosmogony, which tended to become as a result of the cyclical concept of ‘universe … “(12).
The only missing thing, to these scholars, is one last step to replace the image of secular science, that of a “sacred physics” because they find themselves in consistent agreement with Dom Pernety when he wrote: “The Hermetic Philosophers say that we must understand all stories the Egyptians in an entirely different way from what they present to the mind at first. They had not invented all these names and these tales, but for the common people to be not allowed to discover the true way of making gold and the universal medicine … “(13).
The conclusion of the “religious of the Benedictine congregation of St. Maurus” seems slightly too spagyric and limited. We prefer a more correct and complete practice of Alchemy. As well as defined it for us once, masterfully, Eugene Canseliet: Experimental Metaphysics.
A cosmology or cosmogony may well come from the empirical vision, and not only from the mental, of a mineral and metallic microcosm subject to all the cycles of Nature, to the Artist’s will. So then he can tell, teach, and transform into myth, legend, and fable, not the product of human imagination, but precisely what he saw.
Our contemporary, reduced at the mercy of the vagaries of smoky psychisms more or less acute and perceptive, which gives the name of “philosophies”, should not generalize their misfortunes. There could have existed happier age, where people rested their lucky convictions of ‘facts’ and not on opinions.
“… in its kingdom (of Sulphur) there is a mirror where you see the whole world. Anyone who looks in the mirror can see and learn the knowledge of all three parts of the world, can become so wise in these three kingdoms, those were Aristotle and Avicenna, and many others, like those of former ages, they saw in that mirror how the World was created … “(14).
So taught Michael Sendivogius, the latest in a fairy tale, no less “amazing” than the Egyptian.
On the same parallel as Babylon (15) Heliopolis stands, in the Egyptian IUN-U, a very ancient sanctuary of sun worship. Since the pre-dynastic times, they told of how the Sun, RA, uniting to himself, created Shu, the air, and Tefnut, the wet. They, in turn, begat GEB. the male earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky, but so interconnected that the air had to intervene to separate them. These four children were born, paired two by two: Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Neftys.
This is the great Ennead of Heliopolis, the first “tale of Genesis,” which gave rise to a myth that does not cease to fascinate: the story of Osiris, his death, and resurrection. It is also a love story that goes beyond death because one can not talk of Osiris without his beloved Isis.< The full version is by a greek high priesthood the Egyptians kept mercifully concealed their mysteries. Plutarch, in a long monologue (16), tells us the legend, with all the explanations he can give, having premised the below statement, which is worth quoting: “… Beard and cloak are not enough to make a philosopher … (I) am the only one who has understood, through a strict rule, things that are revealed and made concerning these gods, rationally analyzing and meditating on the truths contained in them …”.
In this spirit, we read the main steps of the story that the greek philosopher has left us, “Osiris was born from the Sun .. Isis from Hermes, and Typhon Neftys from Kronos … Then they say that Typhon married Neftys: Isis and Osiris who was in love to the point of joining in the darkness of the womb even before birth … When Osiris was returning (Typhoon) hatched against him a snare, collecting 72 conspirators … Typhon secretly took the body measurements of Osiris, he built a casket that size, with very beautiful and splendid ornaments, and then took it to the banquet hall. Everyone looked admired, and then Typhon promised, like a good game, that it would have given a gift to what we just lying in the same measure. All one after another tried them all, but no one would go exactly; then was the turn of Osiris, and when he lay inside down, the conspirators immediately rushed to close the cover, and welded on the outside with nails and poured above the molten lead. Then the river and the current carried the casket until it was abandoned to the sea … When Isis was informed … wore a robe of mourning … Isis wandered from that day, not knowing where to look, asking about everyone he met … then she got to know that Osiris had joined her sister Neftys so began to look for the child born to them … she found him led by a pack of dogs and reared him. The boy became her bodyguard and her faithful companion. The name of Anubis called him, and it is said that he guarded the gods, as dogs do to men. Consequently, Isis learned that the coffin, borne out of the sea … had gently landed in a heather field; the heather then … clings to the coffin and wrapped around it, hiding it completely … the goddess … pruned the branches of heather … (later recovered and left the coffin in a safe place, off again). But Typhon, while he went hunting at night, discovered it by chance in the moonlight: the recognized body of Osiris; he did it in 14 pieces and scattered them. When Isis heard of that, she began to swim to look here and there, crossing the marshes on a raft of papyrus … the only part of the body of Osiris that Isis could not find was the virile member because it had been thrown into the river for first. There the Lepidote, the Fagr, and Oxyrhynchus had eaten it. “
The story expands on the journey of Osiris at the beginning of his reign and in his final installation as King and Judge of the underworld. In other details, the same Plutarch only mentions or avoids specific versions of the generation of Horus, which completes the divine triad in a kind of Holy Family, perhaps becoming even a paradigm for later religions.
It remains a beautiful fable, full of hermetical suggestions, whose we have highlighted capitalizing words and phrases (17), to drive any alchemical treasure hunt. But we will not repeat the horrible crime of Typhon, grind it with destructive analytical pleasure, in a slow, painstaking, patient work of enigmatic solution, which translates into “recipes” symbols so cleverly veiled and collected.
Confirmed the possibility that Pernety, which tried to do it in a text not entirely original, was already a late follower of a long succession of authors who had stepped on the same road. He said, among other things: “Isis and Osiris are … the agent and the patient in the same subject … The two works that are the subject of this art are included, the first in the expedition of Osiris and the second in the death and apotheosis of the same. With the first one, the stone is made; with the second, the Elixir is formed …” (18).
Even Michael Maier, with more authority, had satisfactorily faced and solved the problem held forth in several places of his writings. In one in particular (18), after quoting the famous passage from the “Vision of Arisleus”: “So join your son Gabric, your most beloved of all your children, with her sister Beia …”. Comments: “… but it must be considered that his mother, that’s to say, Isis, is not the primary cause of death of Osiris, but Typhon, that as a furious whirlwind, kills and divides him into several parts … the same thing are Osiris and Adonis that’s to say the sun, no astronomical … but philosophical … “(19).
We note, with some surprise, the consistency with an earlier version of the myth (19), according to which the mother is Nut, who intervenes to settle the body of Osiris in the place of the daughter, sister, wife, Isis.
We see a symbolic whole that seems to remain constant over the centuries. Anubis, the faithful companion with the dog’s head, so as some medieval representations of common mercury, the “loyal servant.” The floating casket, which we have already spoken about. The evergreen grass that surrounds it. The separation in different parts of the body of the King, who finds himself in a famous print of Trismosin. To conclude, the fish that swallows the fertilizing power of the god, so similar to the “remora” of Sendivogio and Fulcanelli.
There remains the fact that the explanations of the hermetic philosophers are not very illuminating when translated into a language as mysterious as these symbols, which they appropriate with a declaration of total possession.
Perhaps the reasons for such secrecy are the same as Maier lists, numbering them diligently, which are now part of a long written tradition. Inevitably we accept them, repeating here the 6th, which seems very pleasant in its apparent humility, “because if (the Hermetic philosophers) had not used many names, the same children make fun of their wisdom” (20).
Although we believe that the real reason is the substantial harmful futility of any attempt at disclosure, which wants to transform into a cooking recipe something more profound, here we recall a little-known statement of Canseliet, which deserves a careful, cautious read: “Alchemy is a constant purification. The artist must be tuned with his materials, and without this, there is a failure, communication disappears, and contact ceases. If one is not ready, he should not, for example, spend a little important separation; he must know how to dominate it. It is at least dangerous. An experienced chemist will try this simple separation; I will give him the same materials and crucible, and fail because he can not do it. However, his actions will be confident …”. (21).
You can find the original at http://www.montesion.it/index.html
- Diodorus is first century BC, but its source is Hecataeus of Abdera, the late fourth century, who lived in Egypt under Ptolemy I;
- Isis and Osiris, Adelphi. Milan 1958;
- The Egyptian Mysteries, Milan 1984;
- Quoted in The Pythagoreans, edited by A. Magdalene. Bari 1954;
- For persistence, or the rebirth of Egyptian myth. see J. Baltruaitis, Isis Research, London 1985;
- Concerning this traditional teaching, see what Fulcanelli wanted to publish at the end of Les Demeures Philosophales. The Adept decided to destroy a third book, dedicated to this particular point of the doctrine;
- The greek name actually derives from the Akkadian HIKUPTAH, in its turn deriving from the Egyptian. Note that this paraphrase indicated in the cuneiform texts the whole of Egypt, while originally it was alluding to the temple of Ptah which stood in Memphis, and consequently the same Memphis. However, the Akkadian texts in most cases designated the name Egypt with the MI-IS-RI-I repeated in Hebrew and in Arabic MISR. View: Scamuzzi, quoted work.; end E. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Language, London 1973;
- See The Egyptian Religion, by P. Derchain, in History of Religions, edited by H.C.Puech, Vol. I Bari 1976 Laterza. See also the introduction of D. del Corno to Isis and Osiris quoted work and of Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion and London 1980;
- See Derchain. quoted work;
- For example, the temple of Edfu, is located on one side Maat, and on the other Life, offered to certain deities;
- Corpus Hermeticum, Texte établi et traduit par par A.D.Nock A.J.Festugière, Paris 1973. Volume II: Of Hermes Trismegistus. A holy book dedicated to Asclepius. Below is a sad description of the aging of the world, really interesting to read for its awesome similitude of current events;
- Derchain, quoted work;
- Dictionnaire Mytho Hermetique, par-D.Antoine Joseph Pernety. MDCCLVIII Paris;
- Novi Lumini Chemici Tractatus alius De Sulphure, Sulphur in J.J.Mangeti Biblioteca Chemica Curiosa, Lib. III, sect. II, subsect. XI;
- It is astonishing the narrow strip ranging from 30 ° to 33 ° latitude north. It seems a predestined area;
- Isis and Osiris quoted work. Note that Greeks called Seth, Typhon. We recall here a passage from Fulcanelli (Les Demeures Philosophales, Paris 1965, Volume II, pag.153) “from the greek Typhaón, poetic word for” Typhon “or” typhós “- the greek Typhoon – means here” filling with smoke, light, aflame. “
- I can assure I have found no highlighted capitals in the test I translated. But the sentences chosen by Lucarelli are enough;
- Les Fables et grecques égyptiennes dévoilées. 2 vol. Berlin 1758. Pernety, among other things, took a scholarly study of a german hermetist: J. Tolli, Fortuita…in quibus…tota Fabularis Historia, Graeca,Phoenicia,Egyptiaca ad Chemiam pertinere asseritur, Amstelaedami, M DC LXXXVII;
- Maier. Symbola Aura Mensae Duodecim Nationum. Francofurti M DC XVII;
- Symbola quoted work. Liber XI. Melchiori Cibinensis Ungari Symbolum; Texts of the Pyramids, sixth Dynasty; Symbola quoted work. Liber V. Avicennae Arabis Symbolum;
- The Tourbe de philosophes. n2. trim. 1958. Paris;