You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
If the words and images seem strange to you there's a reason for this.
Our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you and there's nothing to fear.
In previous Discourses, we've noted some of the remarkable ways the mythic ship of heaven
contradicts all of the usual translations of Egyptian texts -
the very texts that give us the most concrete information on this vehicle of the gods.
Translators sought to accommodate the problem by mistranslating the literal
meanings of Egyptian words. But the real problem has its source in the
inescapable motion of the ship itself. The ship flatly refuses to cooperate
with any solar interpretation. Why, at the beginning of the ancient "day" was the ship
described descending, while at the beginning of the ancient "night" it was
rising? And why the consistent linkage of the descending ship with the left and
the rising ship with the right? In fact, every detail of the cosmic ship becomes
absurd the moment we attempt to relate the concrete language to the appearance
of the Sun in our sky. In following the literal evidence of a revolving crescent,
we've noted the ship above in it's phase of dimness, and below in it's phase of
brightness. This consistent language holds vast implications for our
understanding of the ancient sky. But it reverses every common assumption about
the regions of the so-called day and night journeys of the ancient sun god.
Historically, one misconception led inescapably to another. The regions
above and below in the cosmic circuit invariably came to be translated as
heaven and earth, a mistake that precluded any useful understanding of
the ship of heaven. The two most frequently used Egyptian words for the regions
above and below can be seen in the pairing of the concepts Pet and Ta.
When standing in combination, Pet always meant "the upper region" and Ta always
meant the region "below". These are the accepted literal meanings of the
combined words. In the Pyramid Texts, we find Night-bark of Ra sailing over
Pet, the upper region. But what is this sun god doing above at night?
"Thou sailest on high in the evening barge" means literally, in the phase of dimming (above).
It's not literally our night, the ship was depicted above in the literal phase of dimming,
mistranslated as a night journey. The upper region Pet was also
represented by the arching body of the goddess Nut, and we see the ship in it's
so-called night journey, moving up and across the region of Pet, the region above.
And it's a wonder that virtually no one has asked why is the ship above
in this phase of the daily cycle when the solar mythologists have claimed for
a century and a half that the god crosses below the land at night to the
place of sunrise. In contrast, the so-called day ship occupied the lower
region - contradicting all standard treatments of the subject.
The best way to test an extraordinary idea is to force the reasoning to it's
extreme where logical implications can be confronted in the most explicit terms. If
an idea is fundamentally incorrect the extreme cases will invariably reduce
the idea to absurdity. In fact, the ship of heaven gives us some excellent
examples of the logical tests. Just imagine the situation faced by ancient
sky worshipers looking back to the age of the gods, but with inadequate
conceptual tools to comprehend the symbolic language.
The crescent above, when interpreted mythically as a ship, would surely have
provoked some enigmatic Egyptian responses to the afterlife journey of
the king in this cosmic ship. How would the celebrants of this journey,
regard a ship that was inverted - upside down - as it traversed the upper region.
In fact, to the Egyptians the journey above, the so-called night crossing was
fraught with peril. But why? There's an irony in the way the Egyptian priests
sought to protect the king, upon his death, from things clearly remembered
about this envisioned voyage with Ra across the upper region. Exactly as we
would expect, the texts convey a fear of traveling upside down during this
passage. So there's a spell for not traveling upside down in the realm of
the dead, and one says simply, "Not to walk upside down" ...
"I will not be head downwards amongst those who are head downwards", reads another text.
"The king will not be hanged head downwards".
The deceased declares, "It is the Night-bark and the Day-bark ... I am not upside-down
in the presence of Ra". The idea of a ship sailing upside down is well
worth tracing to it's origins, and the artistic traditions do not disappoint us,
but they must be followed back in time to their archaic roots. In later times,
when texts describe the ship's journey above, in the literal phase of dimming,
the words were mistranslated as a night journey, a blatant contradiction. For us
however, the problem is that the ship was shown upright, not inverted, as our
reconstruction requires. But the more archaic tradition we are looking for
comes from the Papyrus of Amen-Hetep in the Cairo Museum. In the second
scene depicted on the papyrus, the goddess Nut is shown in the usual arched
or semicircular fashion as representative of the upper portion of
the ship circuit. And the ship of the sun itself is depicted in it's night journey
crossing the body of the goddess. But here, unlike the more familiar versions of
later times, the ship is not upright but inverted. And so we ask, is it possible
that the graphic image speaks for an original tradition, later distorted
out of a royal fear of "traveling upside down"? The answer comes from
hieroglyphic evidence that preceded by many centuries the more familiar
artistic portrayals of the night journey.
In Spell 211 of the Coffin Texts, this voyage, literally the phase
of dimming, is described in the instruction to the newly deceased king. He has to
learn the path of the right (Amentet, the ascending path), then to "ferry across the
upper region when the divine land is turned upside down". The position of the
ship at this moment is presented in the hieroglyphic text: not just the land of
the gods, but the ship itself is upside down.
Perhaps the idea that the land of the gods could be turned upside down is no
less mystifying than the inversion of the ship. But when we realize that the
crescent-ship is the brightly illuminated portion of the divine land
we see that the inversion of the crescent in it's so-called "night" position,
literally the phase of dimming would be viewed as an inversion of both the land and the ship.
In our reconstruction of this ancient imagery, we've suggested
that the ship revolved above and around a visible, axial column, remembered as
the world mountain ... known globally under many names and mythic interpretations.
If this conclusion is correct, we should expect a direct confirmation of the
ship's connection to the mountain of the gods. Call it an inescapable prediction
of the reconstruction. The Egyptian sources speak eloquently in confirming
this very connection. In the words of the deceased king, the texts say, "I assume my
pure seat which is in the bow of the Bark of Ra. It is the sailors who convey
Ra round about the Mountain of Fire and Light, and it is they who will convey
me around about the Mountain of Fire and Light".
Hail, Only One! Behold, thou art in the Sektet boat as it goeth
round about the Mountain of Fire and Light". In these quotes, I've used the literal
reading of the Aakhut the cosmic mountain, not the inaccurate and highly misleading
translation of the mount as a mere "horizon". That allows us to see the
underlying symbolism in it's integrity. As we have previously shown, the pillar and
crescent mean that revolving arms of the pillar god, the horns of the Bull of
Heaven and the twin peaks of the world mountain, all predictably equated with the cosmic ship.
So once more, we're brought back to our earlier admonition: do not believe in
coincidences. The ability of a concrete reconstruction to predict explicit
details, when the details are simply absurd under common suppositions, is not to be taken lightly.
In fact, the contrasting phases of the ship of heaven in it's daily journey,
will give us an ideal introduction to an even broader mythic theme - the cosmic
twins as figures of the revolving crescent in it's archaic daily cycle.
That will be the subject of our next Discourse.