Embodying Osiris: The Secrets of Alchemical Transformation

Embodying

OSIRIS

THE SECRETS OF

ALCHEMICAL

TRANSFORMATION

Thom F. Cavalli, PhD

Learn more about Thom F. Cavalli and his work at www.cavallibooks.com, www.alchemicalpsychology.com, and www.facebook.com/anandvichara

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Copyright © 2010 by Thom F. Cavalli, Ph.D.

First Quest Edition 2010

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

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Cover image: Mural painting of Osiris. Burial chamber from 19th dynasty. Copyright © DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.

Cover design by Margarita Reyfman.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cavalli, Thom F. (Thom Frank).

Embodying Osiris: the secrets of alchemical transformation / Thom F. Cavalli.—1st Quest ed.

  p.  cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0880-0

1. Osiris (Egyptian deity)  2. Alchemy—Psychological aspects.  3. Jungian psychology.  I. Title.

BL2450.O7C39 2010

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2071-0

5 4 3 2 1 * 10 11 12 13 14

To my beloved sister and brother, Dyan and Robert

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? . . . In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.

—Carl Gustav Jung

Life’s raison d’être is to become conscious of oneself; then the aim of life is cosmic consciousness, the consciousness of the All, beyond transient and mortal contingencies. To accept and to attempt to fathom this, the teaching of all revealed religions, is worth living for.

—R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Pronunciation Key for Major Egyptian Gods and Pharaohs

Foreword

Introduction: Equal to God

1. In the Land of His Birth

2. Alchemy, Magic, and Osiris

3. Disturbance in the Matrix

4. Dark Deeds

5. Party to a Murder

6. Rise Up!

7. Isis, Heka, and Alchemy

8. Solve et Coagula

9. Changing of the Gods

10. Courting Opposites

11. Ma’a-kheru

12. Embodying God

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1. Egyptian Gods that Appear in this Book

Appendix 2. Time Line and Brief Dynastic History

Appendix 3. Map of Ancient Egypt

Notes

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

About the Author

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. Djed Pillar and Osiris

1.1. Ra in the Solar Boat

1.2. Apis Bull

3.1. Nun supporting the Solar Boat

3.2. Nut, Geb, and Shu

4.1. Osiris with wheat growing from his body

5.1. Entombed King

5.2. Dissolving King

6.1. Phallic Tree

6.2. Spiral Pschent Crown detail

6.3. Raising the Djed Pillar

8.1. The Golden Head

10.1. Mercurius

12.1. Akhenaten worshipping Aten

12.2. The Field of Reeds

A.3. Map of Ancient Egypt

PRONUNCIATION KEY FOR MAJOR EGYPTIAN GODS AND PHARAOHS

GODS

Note: Goddesses’ names always end in –et. Most names, however, have been changed from the original language (Coptic, Greek, Latin, etc.) and therefore do not follow this rule. Isis’s name, for example, was originally Aset, Hathor was Het, and Neith was Net.

PHARAOHS

The above pronunciation key is only meant as a guide to enliven the reader’s experience. We do not know how these names were actually pronounced—they changed over time and place. Pronunciations are different according to each country’s language. At best, this is how people in the English-speaking world pronounce these names today.

FOREWORD

We are separated from those who came before us not only by time but by sensibility. The ancient Romans are reasonably close; we can gaze at their marble busts and see them almost as people we know. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews are a step further removed, although we can still recognize in them the lineaments of our cultural ancestors. But when we come to Egypt, we hit a wall. The mind of every literate person is populated with images of Egypt—pyramids, mummies, bird-headed gods, ladies with eyelids green from ground malachite—and scholars have probed into the life of that nation with every tool of ingenuity. We know which Pharaoh ascended the throne in which year; we know what the hieroglyphs say and even how much beer the Egyptians drank. But for all this, their world, haunting, mysterious, ever-beckoning but ever-receding, holds us at a distance. We approach it as we might approach the sun setting in a Saharan landscape—we appear to come closer, but we never do.

One of the strangest and most distinctive features of Egyptian art reinforces this impression. Their paintings depict the faces of figures in profile, while the eyes remain frontal. We see only one side of the face and one eye—but that eye appears to be gazing at the viewer. Thus it is with Egypt as a whole: it confronts us directly with its single eye (an ancient symbol of spiritual perception), but half its face is always averted. The ceaseless flow of books, excavations, museum exhibits, and bizarre theories of alternative history constantly promises to reveal this hidden side of the face of Egypt, but somehow it never does.

Thom Cavalli’s Embodying Osiris highlights another way of looking at the ancient Egyptians. It takes their central myth—the death and resurrection of Osiris—as an illustration of certain processes that occur both in the universe and in the human psyche. As Cavalli suggests, it may be more accurate to see the Egyptian gods not so much as divine personages ruling over certain isolated spheres of reality, as the Greeks and Romans of late antiquity did (so that Mars presides over war somewhat like a secretary of defense), but as the embodiments of certain fundamental processes.

To understand this view, we might turn to a work that is as old as the myths of Egypt. The Indian Rig Veda (much of which was composed, probably, in the second millennium BC) includes a hymn to a storm god named Vata. Part of it says, "Moving along his paths in the middle realm of space, he does not rest even for a single day. Friend of the waters, first-born keeper of the Law, where was he born? What was he created from? Breath of the gods, embryo of the universe, this god wanders wherever he pleases. His sounds are heard, but his form is not seen. Let us worship the gale with oblation.¹

As these lines imply, Vata is not the god of the storm; he is the storm. He does not exist apart from his manifestations in nature; he is identical with them. In a way, such a view of the universe comes close to the contemporary scientific outlook. The ancient view differs in this respect only: it sees these events—storm and wind and sun—not as impersonal forces but as personal beings that can be addressed and propitiated and appeased. This, we could say, is the basis of all paganism.

But the gods of the Osiris myth are not quite in this category; rather, their nature and power go further and deeper still. One man who understood this dynamic was Plutarch. Best known as a biographer, Plutarch, who lived in the first century ad, was an initiate into the ancient mysteries; indeed, he spent the last thirty years of his life as a priest at Delphi. His treatise On Isis and Osiris gives the most complete version of a myth that is known only in fragments from Egyptian sources. In this work he considers, and dismisses, the possibilities that Isis and Osiris are merely mythologized depictions of the moon and sun, as well as deriding the dull crowd who associate these gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the season, or with the generation of the corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout.²

Plutarch would have had little use for Sir James Frazer, whose classic study The Golden Bough makes exactly this equation: In one of his aspects the god was a personification of the corn, which may be said to die and come to life every year.³ Frazer adds that Osiris in his other aspects was a tree spirit and a fertility god. Frazer, a monumentally erudite classicist, was familiar with Plutarch’s text, which he quotes in his own writings, but he evidently did not take it seriously.

What did Plutarch himself think? Here is his view of Set, the villain of the Osiris drama, whom the Greeks called Typhon: Neither drought nor wind nor sea nor darkness is the essential of Typhon, but the whole hurtful and destructive [element] which is in nature. That is, Set is not merely a destructive aspect of the wind or sea, but the principle of destruction and dissolution that operates at all levels of nature—and in the human psyche as well. Plutarch goes on to say: Typhon is the passionate and titanic and reasonless and impulsive [aspect] of the Soul, while of its corporeal [side he is] the death-dealing and pestilent and disturbing, with unseasonable times and intemperate atmospheres and concealments of sun and moon.

As for Osiris: "In the Soul [of cosmos], then, Mind and Reason (Logos), the guide and lord of all the best in it, is Osiris; and so in earth and air and water and heaven and stars, that which is ordered and appointed and in health, is the efflux of Osiris, reflected in seasons and temperatures and periods."⁴ Isis is the feminine [principle] of Nature and that which is capable of receiving the whole of genesis, while Horus is the force of reintegration, who has not destroyed Typhon utterly, but has brought over to his side his efficacy and strength.⁵

In short, there are principles of order and destruction in the universe. None of these has complete supremacy, but they vie and alternate like the yang and yin of the I Ching. They express themselves at all levels of reality—in seasons and storms as well as in the human psyche. It is as if one were to take the primary forces known to contemporary physics—gravity, electromagnetism, and so on—and regard them as personal entities that we can anger and appease. As the Vedic hymn suggests, we may not know where these forces came from, but we are foolish to ignore them. They exist within us, and, as C. G. Jung understood, they are expressed in dreams and archetypes.

Even so, alchemical imagery is much more than a projection of unconscious elements in the psyche; it depicts genuine substances and processes that can be found in the alchemist’s laboratory. But alchemy also differs from conventional chemistry in acknowledging that these same processes operate in the mind and soul of the practitioner and that the alchemist must work on himself as he works on his material.

That few grasp these mysteries is a testimony not to their falsity but to their subtlety and grandeur. One of the few practicing alchemists I know is a former professor of chemistry who left his field of study when it began to bore him. After all, it is comparatively easy to perform an experiment in chemistry: you follow the instructions, and you get certain results. In alchemy, it is not so. Everything must conjoin for the work to succeed: the planets, the materials, and even the soul of the alchemist must be in proper alignment. No set of directions can map out this process entirely. This may be why the directions are so cryptic.

What this process entails, and how it transforms the individual, is the theme of this book. As Cavalli’s magisterial survey of Egyptian art and myth suggests, it may have been the central theme of Egypt itself.

—Richard Smoley

May 2010

Richard Smoley’s latest book is The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. He is also the author of Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition; Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity; The Essential Nostradamus; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; and Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Jay Kinney). Smoley is the former editor of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. Currently he is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and of Quest Books.

INTRODUCTION: EQUAL TO GOD

Egypt is an image of heaven, or to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and are active in heaven have been transferred to a lower place. Even more than that, if the whole truth be told, our land is the temple of the entire cosmos.

—Thoth, Corpus Hermeticum

T he most difficult obstacle in unraveling the secrets of ancient Egypt is acknowledging the possibility that we might never know what these people were really thinking. In Jungian psychology, the unknown is relegated to the boundless world of the unconscious. What little we know of this world is that it is the realm of dreams, archetypes, and myths. Certainly, the greater part of the unconscious is not known and will remain forever beyond our grasp. But somewhere before we reach this outer dimension is a mysterious place that lies just beyond the threshold of our ordinary perception. We can, with some conditions, apprehend this numinous territory. The secret of gaining access to this place has to do with the way we view the unconscious and, for our present purpose, ancient Egypt.

Many people today struggle with the whole notion of the unconscious. Some are curious while others wrestle with ways to make sense of it. Most people either give it no mind or do not believe it exists in any significant way. The unconscious world wasn’t a problem in ancient Egypt. For these people, it was an explicit part of everyday life. Their gods were very much alive for them, and magic was widespread. Evidence of the unconscious is especially apparent in their cosmology and funerary rites. For example, an important step in the mummification process was the Opening of the Mouth ritual. In order for the spirit of the dead to function in the afterworld, the senses of the deceased body had to be reanimated. This ritual involved specific operations that enabled the spirit to see, hear, speak, and navigate through the underworld until it ascended into the heavens.

With some modification we can apply a similar approach to gaining access to the psychic land of mystery. Note that I equate the Egyptian’s concrete conception of the underworld with our modern notion of the unconscious. In this way we will unveil secrets of the ancient past. More importantly, this approach offers an entirely different view of death and rebirth, one that is especially important to anyone interested in exploring the development of human consciousness. Specifically, the ancient world teaches us how to view death as a critical stage in an ongoing process of individuation that does not end with physical life.

What little we know of the unconscious shows us it not only contains vast amounts of information but also has a peculiar intelligence that reveals more of human nature than today’s science might glean from rocks and artifacts. Modern science, bound by rational methods of inquiry, cannot fully account for the unconscious, which includes irrational content and is far more expansive than reason alone can grasp. The whole of humankind rests on pillars of a collective unconscious that spans all time—it is transpersonal. Such intelligence is not directly visible. We look at remnants of ancient Egypt but cannot fathom a world so radically different from ours. Misguided notions and unanswered questions abound. For instance, we may have cracked the code of the hieroglyphs, but we have no idea how these words sound or if they were ever spoken. Great debate still surrounds Egyptian religion: Was it truly polytheistic? Did these people have mystical experiences, or was their religion entirely concerned with salvation after death?

Despite many years of intense study of ancient Egypt, mystery still pervades this magical place. We are so fascinated by what our eyes see that we seldom ponder the deeper, mystical meaning of past traditions. We don’t realize, writes philosopher Jeremy Naydler, that we live in the presence of mystery and we don’t realize it because we are so distracted, so fascinated, by the apparent ‘out-thereness’ of everything.¹ Those who manage to look inside seem to make a deliberate effort to conceal their insights, perhaps for good reason. Power was the chief reason for keeping esoteric knowledge secret. A pharaoh’s power rested on his unique ability to commune with the gods. He kept sacred knowledge within the royal bloodlines and out of the hands of those who might misuse it. Tomb robbers were a constant threat. Then, there were others: politically motivated revisers of history and those who purported to speak or channel the voices of ancient deities. For all these reasons a true, mystical understanding of ancient Egypt is extremely difficult to achieve and perhaps not possible at all.

The truth of this ancient land is as complex and elusive as that inscrutable expression on the face of the Sphinx. This is the mystery one must accept as we begin our Jungian exploration of the Osiris myth. Of course, I will offer dozens of interpretations and amplifications, but none of these is intended to explain the mystery of this strange god and the exotic country of his origin. A mystery can only be known by divine revelation, and that comes by way of grace. At best, we can prepare our minds to receive such a blessing.

Most people love a good mystery story. It keeps us guessing and wondering where the narrative will end—who will survive and who will die. Authors manipulate plots to keep us in suspense. Like magicians, they deftly suspend disbelief with literary device and poetic license. We will certainly find all this and more in the myth of Osiris. But what of the mystery that has no conclusion, one that keeps us endlessly fascinated and in full pursuit of the unknown? This mystery lives up to its definition in that it keeps our eyes closed and our lips sealed tight. Osiris, the god of the dead, certainly offers a mystery that brings us eerily close to death, the greatest mystery of all. Maybe the way to complete the journey of individuation begins by passing through these gates: mystery and death, two subjects that will engage us throughout this book.

While I am aware of many hundreds of gods—pagan, Hindu, and Christian—I have rarely experienced the kind of mystery embodied in the archetypal image of Osiris. The antiquity of his myth transports us back in time to ingenious people who built the physical and psychic pillars on which the contemporary world rests. We are all familiar with their physical accomplishments, but to know Osiris is to discover the secrets behind his myth—movements that gave rise to the modern human psyche. Unlike the objective study of physical evolution, understanding the nature of psyche requires personal involvement. We must equip ourselves with imagination and empathic engagement² in order to reveal truths that lie hidden within ancient formulae, hieroglyphic texts, and cryptic images. We must embody this god, not just study him. By embodying Osiris we experience the kinetics of change. Indeed, Osiris is the god of being and becoming.

To master these secrets means to become like a god. A third-century text, the Corpus Hermeticum, states, If you don’t make yourself equal to God, you can’t perceive God; for like is known by like. Leap free of everything that is physical, and grow as vast as that immeasurable vastness; step beyond all time and become eternal; then you will perceive God.³

This passage may sound like heresy to some, but it is not intended to offend. Rather, the purpose of the alchemists was to illuminate the power of creation each of us possesses. It is heresy only to those who reject mystery, can’t tolerate paradox, and hold tightly to a strictly rational view of reality. The task before us is not to challenge God but to cultivate an inner sense of divinity that adds mystery to all human life. For this reason I will draw from the alchemists since they, unlike most modern scientists, never split psyche and soma; spirit resides in matter, God is within the province of human experience.

To define Osiris in any rational way is virtually impossible since the essence of his spirit is mercurial, numinous, and deeply mystical. While I will describe him in great detail, the mystery of his basic nature cannot be understood any more than we might expect to explain love. This inability is of course vexing to any author who wants to define his subject with accuracy and completeness. Such a claim I cannot make. I offer bits of myth, cosmology, and history that only hint at the mystery we call Osiris and point to important ways he touches our lives.

As with all gods, Osiris exists in the unconscious, and it is our job to resurrect him. In doing so we gain a depth of understanding that enriches our quality of life. Through deep understanding we learn that death is not to be feared. Instead, death is a teacher that shows us how creation comes by way of loss and regeneration. Physical death is a natural ending of material existence, but if we go no further than this objective explanation of loss, we lose all sense of the mystery that results from surrendering our physical life to a greater reality.

Mystery brings us to the limit of the known world. The philosopher Henry Corbin referred to this dimension as the imaginal world. We naturally avoid this world. It has a disquieting effect on our sensibilities. The mind and senses are founded on the certainty that come with cognition and sensory experience. An imaginal view of life requires us to apprehend unseen realities. Imagination, wonder, intuition, curiosity, and mystery describe this numinous territory. On the one hand, we abhor the ruthlessness of a world that defies our most cherished faculty, rationality. It strips us of all attempts to organize data. Without this organizing principle, we do not have the means to form comforting concepts like wholeness, closure, and unity. Paradoxically, it is just such concepts that at times are the very impediment to divine knowledge. Mysteries, says Egyptologist Bojana Mojsov, were wordless sermons . . . meant to imply the profoundest revelation of the truth that was all embracing and the source of all teaching.⁴

Egypt is an exceptional example of the imaginal world. Other than scholars, most people view ancient Egypt more as a fantasy than as a place that actually existed. The mystery of this world is heightened by the fact that there is no Homer to sing the praises of this ancient land or even Hesiod to frame the Egyptian mystery in a complete, cohesive narrative. (Plutarch comes closest to stringing together spells and exaltations to form a myth of