Introduction (in part)
"Osiris, the god of the dead, is a green god, an image of the seed waiting in the dark to burst forth into renewal.His symbol was the growing corn.His death and rebirth illuminated the path from darkness to light, from unconsciousness to enlightenment.In that light, I called this book Awakening Osiris for I thought of it as a call to consciousness and spiritual awakening.We are all Osirises.
"The Book of the Dead is a misnomer applied by historians to a text which the ancient Egyptians referred to as the Book of Coming Forth by Day.I much prefer the Egyptian title as it seems best to represent what the book implies.No definitive version of the Book of the Dead exists.Rather it is a compilation of funerary texts and religious hymns written by priests and copied by scribes during a period spanning approximately 3000BC to 300AD.(p.15)
"I took Pound at his word and tried to "make it new."I wanted to once again offer it up as a celebration of the beauty and terror of life.The awe of awakening to a new day, or perhaps a new self.The wisdom of the ancients seems eternal, yet we are all people affecting our changes.The work of a lifetime is the process of returning to light and life.So it seemed right to blow a little dust off the old Egyptian book and let it shine anew in a more modern era."(p.25)
Special note about the ancient wisdom
Alvin Boyd Kuhn in The Lost Light (1940) and other works has shown that the ancient wisdom was not particularly concerned about "life" after physical death.The ancient wisdom teaches that the divine spark, variously symbolised by Osiris, the Christ, etc. is within each person.We are "dead" until we contact this divine spark.We only come really alive when we recognise and promote the divine aspects of our life on this earth, here and now.In the 3rd century Christianity became a political organisation and tossed out the ancient wisdom,plunging much of the world into ignorance and chaos.The Book of Coming Forth by Day is about becoming alive now, and living this life as a full human being, in the presence of the divine.
Various extracts from Awakening Osiris
The house of heaven is the house of man.No walls stand between heaven and earth.(p.49)
Of fire returning to fire,he can not be turned away, unless a man extinguishes his light himself,unless he casts out god.If he casts out god, he shall die.He shall be nothing, will be nothing,and will have been nothing.He shall never have existed.(66)
We are like Horus.We are children of Osiris.We are light defying darkness.He was twice born : once of sky,once of his mother;that is once of spirit and once of matter.Having fought cunning and deceit, he came at last to the house of Osiris and was uplifted to heaven.The sun and moon became his eyes.He was light giving light,reflecting light.(68)
There is no creation without destruction.To make the pot to carry water, the river must give up its clay.To make the child the father must give up his seed.To make love ,one gives up the self.Creation is death.Sex is death.All the ways of making are sacrifice.So bit by bit those who create murder themselves,use themselves up,give labor their love.(70)
May my heart increase.May it open wide as sky,enough to hold the breadth of god.May it shape itself into crystal.May a light shine on the hidden things that a man might know himself,his colors, songs and days.May the eight gods whisper secrets.May a man grow great enough to inhabit his own heart.May his heart be wide enough to hold the hearts of others.May those he loves link hands, a chain of forever....May his heart become an altar unto god.May all that pass through be offered to heaven.(120)
There are those who know nothing of walking in light,who dwell in caves or creep from the rocks,who doubt that the songs of sparrows are real,who live by the club and knife.They would seize a man's dreams and speak them with fetid tongues.They'd tear out his heart and scatter his bones.Their road is dark but just as well travelled as mine,though their shadows and souls refuse to walk with them.(132)
I have held my destiny in my two hands and I am the shape I made.I have suffered and loved.I have walked through fire and did not burn.I've been blown by wind and did not fall.I've walked the long road and kept to my journey though I met no other traveller.I have lost and found myself in every rock, field and tree.I know what I am and what I imagine.I know shadow and light, and I have never been satisfied with shelter and bread when the great was left unattained. This I have done to enter death and turn from nothing toward life.I shall pass into heaven, even I shall pass like eternity, quietly in the fire and flesh.(149)
This is what I was born to: to live,to love, to change and embrace the infinite.I shall not forget my becoming.(150)
Even great gods are bound by law not to interfere with man's own becoming.Therefore we die and lie alone awaiting transformation.The gods care not if you rage and thrash your breast.They hear not words but thoughts.They speak not to ears.Be silent then and let them speak to the god within.Be quieter still and let the will speak through you.(152)
There is no rest.The act is now.In your lives you will make children,make peace,make errors,you will make trouble,you will dance under the sun and moon.As long as you live you will create life. You will rise and fall many times.It is like the making of a good loaf of bread.You will be nourished.
The 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. Dance in the moment.Reach down and pull up song.Spin and chant and forget the sorrow that we are flesh and bone.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.(165)
Talk is unnecessary.We have been seduced by many words, many colors,many thorns,many bright flowers.I speak for the quiet language of sun, the yawn and shudder of a newborn lion covered with black markings.I speak for the gods hidden in things that cry. Uncover your faces.Through your own light ,come.There is fire within you three thousand times over that you do not yet know.From your own bodies you give birth to all time and its seasons.The god you seek is within.The truth you chase lies between your own eyebrows.Look again with a different eye.(171)
In every stone the gods live, in the bushes, in the eyes of children.In every stone lies truth one could hold in the hand.In every breath we speak what we know,being what we are.I am a man of good intention.I know a god or crocodile when I see one.I know the branches that make the tree.I know the sap that rises and falls and the fidelity from which blossoms spring.And I've heard of horrors awaiting men who never see the action of gods in things.I've heard talk of blood and sinew, but I know worst than this must be the shock of falling from earth, of becoming less than a gnat flung from the hand of god.It is not death I fear, it is unbeing and uselessness, of having never been.(194)
When the time comes,I give up life without regret to feed a spirit greater than mine.I shall die , a small thing become part of the larger world.May we live forever and forever. May the light shine through us and on us and in us.May we die each night and be born each morning that the wonder of life should not escape us.May we love and laugh and enter lightly into each other's hearts.May we live forever.May we live forever.(201)
In the heat of the day I seek shadows.At night I praise the light of stars.The moon grows legs and wanders through an old man's heart seeking some dark corner to inspire.At midday the gods walk through town invisible as cats.Only children and wise old men know the difference.(216)
HYMN TO HATHOR
Blue-lidded daughter of dawn, golden lady of the mountains,carrier of her father's wisdom, let an old man rest in your arms.Let him look last on love's face, breathing love's breath.I live in light a million years.The sun rises or sets now - it matters not.Here is ecstasy in death and certainty in life.We are gods in the body of god,truth and love our destinies.Go then and make of the world something beautiful, set up a light in the darkness.
Chapter 2: Greeting Ra
This day I am with you.Stabbed by the light of the great mind I wake.The sun crests the hill and the hawk,according to a higher will, whirls and circumscribes day.I am called from my house.I shuffle sand underfoot, but my heart leaps.I open, am pierced by light.A cry escapes my lips.I know not what I say, it is the language of soul beneath skin, the song of birds in acacia trees.
Beautiful is the golden seed from which the corn arises; beautiful the sun on the hill from which springs god's day.My body nourishes some unfolding time and purpose. I shine bronze as Hathor's mirror.My heart lifts like the sun.Passion and power quiver on the land, casting long shadows.
Now the people in their houses stir, yawning, shouting, stretching.Shot through with light, they glow and quiver.Stones of sunlight pile up in heaven.Emerald is truth when god draws near.Blessed are we by sun.
Ra is the child, a golden knot of flesh dropped from open air, bright star in the dark house of Osiris, heir to the ages, word edged into world.He grows a long beard and sits on the mountain, knowing its secrets.He rises from the flood.Drawing up water, he quenches the thirst of his people.They drink and enter the river.He sucks the breasts of heaven, golden-haired, flesh on fire.Always burning, returning, always constant and new.
It is his breath we breathe, his love that endures, his power that moves the world.We are the quivering of his arrows, the stirring of his hands.We are his spirit moving in matter.May the eye of god pierce us and give us the grace of his will.We are held in god's hands.Like the ocean, we whirl and remain the same.We are bound by law and held by the truth of change, that all seasons return, and that which was once and is no more shall come again.
Sing then, rejoice and bind yourself to god's will.See how the seed falls from the tree and is buried.Die at once and live again.You shall grow like that sycamore, rooted in matter, bound for boundless sky.You shall be blown by wind.You shall see the storm and sing its praises.You shall lie in the fields and kiss the earth.Raise your arms.You shall see the fury and power of god and change forever.
Drink the cup of heaven.Let grace roll down your head like water.Drink in earth, take in the things of the world.The barley grows straight in rows;the young shoots unfurl according to a higher purpose.Truth rides visibly through the world.Have you not seen it? The sun shimmers with the power of gold.We are breathless in golden air.Drink in the light and praise the cup of forever that spills out the threads of eternity.
Ra is an old man walking the world, as much with the earth as with the
skin of a snake.He is with us, the spirit, the gold, the god, the ebb of
life, watcher over the world.We rise like swallows and fly up the ladder
of heaven.We sit in his hand.He buries us in the blue egg of the world.We
are pressed into the soil and rise.We grow in him.The world changes, and
god and men.We spin and sing in the house of sun.The earth is glad.Cows
chew the cud of light.We breathe the perfume of a golden flower.Old men
and women rise, burst from their houses, arms lifted, dancing,crying,singing.Dawn
is a lyre playing the song of day.
Ra rises.He goes out into the world,a passion,a fire burning up night,making
day.His light ennobles the face of heaven.He warms the belly of sky.He
gladdens Nut, his mother.He walks the upper regions, his heart inflamed
with love.The waters in the pool of the farthest oasis are calmed.He gathers
the sand serpents to his breast.He fears no living thing.He made them,
what is known and not known.He speaks their names and takes their venom.
The snake who gobbles the world enters Ra.Burned in fire, he vomits the evils he has spoken.His words are smelted into gold.With a kiss, Ra turns poison into magic.He twines the snake about him.Now death lives on his forehead, side by side with light.Let breath come and go.Let the great world change.Let men see that serpents entwine the god as the light of god entwines each man.It brushes his lips with sunlight, with kisses of life, kisses, kisses of joy, kisses of poison and magic.
The evening boat draws near.Ra comes to meet it at the edge of the sky, the edge of the river, the thin blade of time.It arrives and he steps from the shore of knowing.He enters.Small waves rock the boat and the stems of reeds are bowing.He sails off: north, south, east or west.He travels lightly towards the other shore of time.Infinity is his.
Behold! a star has entered sky.The geese take flight across a waxing moon.Oh substance, understanding of earth, creature of becoming making himself understood.Flames of fire lick his body like golden serpent tongues, like the mouths of women in love.The wind uplifts him.
He sings a dark song gliding toward dusk in the boat of evening.We show him our hands, the magic he placed in them.His boat slices water.He passes towering papyrus.Three godlike ducks wade in and follow.They glide, turn and spiral.Three godlike sparrows swoop and spin above the banks.Even the frogs are dancing and singing.
Ra rules the air and the gods invisible.The book of law lies in his
hands.The speech of his lips falls lightly into being.His word enters the
world."Creation," says he."Destruction.Power invisible. Glory.The house
of heaven is the house of man.No walls stand between heaven and earth.You
are no farther from me than from your own hot breath."At any moment you
enter heaven by saying,"I am a temple of Ra."Love is his light;compassion
the light of the world.Ra is fire.Joy is the sky.His heart beats forever.The
white clouds of his thought pass over the sky and water.
Chapter 38: In the Talons of the Hawk
The snake will rise to heaven in the talons of the hawk.In their season a thousand boats sail.Forever shadows and light clutch the world and the river floods.Men rise to walk, full of themselves, inundating earth with life.Such is the way of existence - the empty filling and the full emptying.In their season date palms grow.The earth covers you and in your season you rise.From the blue egg was born dark and light.
When you see the slaughterer, kiss him and fall down.His sword is swift.It brings you life.You shall die and rise as Osiris, born in the magic of sky.Suckled by the mother's teat, you will learn the nature of love.In your hands the slaughterer places the sword with which your must conquer darkness.You shall not live by faith, but with certainty; not in sacrifice, but in ecstasy, and know the coming and going of flowers, the passion of love, of loss and pain.
In my hand I took the sword I was given and I learned to use it.I severed the heads of the children of darkness and felt no pity for the fallen. I brought suffering and pain, but wicked men grieved and were changed.Blood ran through the fields.Wheat grew waist high. Green was the color of grace.
Those who saw light and remained unchanged fell to the earth and became asses,into the water and became fish.Their names shine in heaven no longer. Though they see Egypt's people pass through the house of heaven and walk earth's fields again, though they watch boats sail on waters and lotuses float beneath stars, though they pray, their prayers are unanswered.Neither born again nor dying, they remain in silence, unchanged, without soul or form, less than the air between us they are. Nothing.
Therefore, when I saw darkness in myself, I cut it from me and wept for the pain was unbearable.Blind and mourning, I stumbled into the desert, scooping up the blue virtue of sky and setting it in my heart.Then my heart flew out and circled above like a hawk.It joined a thousand birds circling, serpents writhing in their talons.And I wept, for without love or loss or pain I would not have known this happiness.
There is joy on earth and in heaven - joy unimaginable. In every blade of grass rises the strength of the sun.In every mortal shines the star of immortality. All things demand adoration and respect. In each child an old man lies coughing and dying, and in old men fresh children are singing. Though dead perhaps a million years, each day I sail with the sun.On my lips the taste of frankinsense hangs.The soles of my feet are perfumed with myrrh.
Above the fields of malachite golden hawks fly and, in gold upon golden tablets, the gods write.Let men sing loudly and caste incense in the fire.Let ducks be roasted.In this world the sun rises.The sky is unbound.Rains fall to take our thirst.We breathe beneath heaven and upon the earth, in the presence of god and goddesses.
And the quiet that settles on our skin before dawn keeps company with those whose dreams are troubled.
Copyright Phanes Press.Reproduced with permission.
Note: Parts of Awakening Osiris are read by Jean Houston
on two audio cassettes.She really brings the Book of the Dead alive!It's
spiritual message is highly relevant today.