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by Michael A Aquino


  material death it may remain with the corpse to serve as a

  medium for the other emanations, or it may merely linger

  near its remains. Jungians perceived the khat as the

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  “earthbound” anima, and in the oriental vision of the

  Golden Flower it was known as the kuei:

  Tao the undivided, Great One, gives rise to two

  opposite reality principles, Darkness and Light, yin and

  yang. These are at first thought of only as forces of

  nature apart from man. Later the sexual polarities, and

  others as well, are derived from them. From yin comes

  K’un, the receptive feminine principle; from yang

  comes Ch’ien, the creative masculine principle. From

  yin comes ming (life); from yang comes hsing

  (essence).

  Each individual contains a central monad which, at

  the moment of conception, splits into life and essence

  ( ming and hsing). These two are super-individual

  principles and so can be related to eros and logos.

  In the personal bodily existence of the individual

  they are represented by two other polarities, a p’o soul

  (or anima) and a hun soul (or animus). All during the

  life of the individual these two are in conflict, each

  striving for mastery. At death they separate and go

  different ways. The anima sinks to earth as kuei, a

  ghost-being. 32

  It is the khat which is drawn into or activated from

  within a corpse in necromantic magical workings. As the

  32 The Secret of the Golden Flower by Richard Wilhelm (Trans)

  (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1931. A classic of Chinese

  Taoism describing the process of the attainment of transcendental

  existence by the means of creating a mandala from the personal

  subconscious. A key influence in the magical philosophy of Golden

  Dawn Rosicrucian W.B. Yeats. Cf. also a more recent translation by

  Thomas Cleary (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1991).

  - 76 -

  reader may surmise, the khat is also the vehicle for the

  zombie practices of Voodoo. 33

  2. Ren

  The name-emanation. The Egyptians understood

  the power of names to identify, define, protect, and

  empower individuals - most conspicuously in the various

  names taken by each pharaoh. Collectively and separately

  each name affected the very essence of the person, and

  the greatest curse [as also illustrated in literature and

  film] was to be denied all names. 34 Externally a name can

  be used to summon or compel, whether physically

  incarnate or not. The neteru also have the power and the

  discretion to give names as well as take them, and

  through such names to take form and voice.

  33 For details of zombification see Wade E. Davis , The Serpent and

  the Rainbow (New York: Warner Books, 1987), concerning Haitian

  Voodoo and actual zombie creation - not by supernatural means, but

  by the secret use of poisons. The book is based upon field research by

  the author, who holds undergraduate degrees from Harvard

  University in Ethnobotany and Biology, and a Ph.D. in Ethnobotany.

  34 For example, in Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, the

  Egyptian priests who sought to prevent the feared sorceress-Queen

  Tera from returning to incarnate life attempted to destroy all

  inscriptions of her name in her tomb, as well as in other references to

  her. [They failed.]

  In H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the name

  and all references to the Colonial sorcerer Joseph Curwen were

  tracked down and obliterated by the vigilantes who murdered him.

  Elsewhere in exoteric history it was a common practice for

  Egyptian pharaohs and priesthoods to attempt to deface or erase the

  names, images, and monuments of feared or hated predecessors,

  such as the “heretic” Akhenaten.

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  3. Khabit

  The shadow-emanation. This is the connection of

  the still-incarnate khat with the life-forces of the natural

  neteru, enabling it to function as the organizing and

  controlling energy (the individual “life-field”). If the

  khabit is destroyed, the life-field de-energizes and the

  physical body expires. In Black Magic the khabit can also

  be sent out by its owner as an instrument of influence

  upon others.

  After the physical body is destroyed or no longer

  needed, the khabit becomes an avatar of the neter

  Anubis, overseeing guidance of the [noninitiate]

  consciousness through the incoherence of the Tuat into

  the stabilization of Amenti. An initiated consciousness

  needs no such guidance.

  4. Ab

  The heart-emanation. The physical locus of

  individual identity and consciousness, hence the bridge

  between the OU of the neteru and the SU of the four

  metaphysical emanations. It is through the ab that an

  individual realizes and recognizes incarnate identity and

  uniqueness, and following destruction/expiration of one’s

  body it is through the ab that one can reenter the OU [as

  a “ghost”, through “possession” (more precisely merger

  with another, incarnate ab), or through thought-

  transference].

  It is also in the ab that the strength and quality of

  one’s maat (inclination to “good” or “evil”) reposes. This

  is echoed in the later Indian mythologies of karma, and

  was the reason for the posthumous “weighing of the heart

  against a feather” in Egypt. After bodily death the maat

  within the ab overwhelms it completely, so that any

  subsequent manifestation in the OU is likely to be an

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  extreme concentration of either beneficence or

  malevolence.

  5. Ba

  The core-emanation. This is each sentient being’s

  sense of self-awareness, of unique and absolute

  distinction from everything else (both other sentient

  beings and the entire OU). Thus it is the manifestation, or

  Gift, of Set, the neter of non-nature, in each so-conscious

  entity.

  The ba becomes stronger through increased self-

  exploration and -realization: the initiatory process of

  Xeper. Unlike natural initiation, which draws the

  individual into alignment, harmony, and ultimately

  conscious absorption into and indistinction from one or

  more of the natural neteru, Xeper of the ba does not

  dissolve the self into Set, but attains and sustains a

  cohesive essence of its own.

  The anamnesis or “remembered knowledge”

  experienced by the slave boy in Plato’s Meno is perhaps

  more accurately described as the physical-process,

  stimulus/response brain reaching in to the ba for bits of

  its immortal, eternal wisdom. But this is akin to reaching

  for a coal in a hot fire. It is stressful to do, and the result

  can be held only for a fleeting moment without further

  stress. The superficial/physical “self”, which through

  material “hits” continuously reassures itself that it is the

  only self, is shaken by exposure to its falseness
, its

  nothingness. It backs away from such “close encounters”,

  dismisses them as “illusions”, “fantasy”, “imagination”,

  etc., and hastens to rebuild its fortress of material-

  sensation walls.

  Absent Setian orientation and initiation, a ba simply

  continues as one’s sense of identity, thus the “essential

  self” around which all of the other souls coalesce and

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  recognize themselves. Within noninitiates this results in

  the ba being sensed as a dreamy, meditative “state of

  being” which, if indulged in with persistence and

  intensity, leads to its overwhelming the other souls, hence

  “nirvana” and similar states of ba-ecstasy.

  6. Ka

  The transmigration-emanation. The ka is the

  complete mirror-image of all eight natural and non-

  natural emanations, fused into an avatar, Doppelgänger,

  or Horla, a completely metaphysical remanifestation of

  oneself which can exist and displace without limit, both

  within the non-natural universe generated by one’s ba

  and within the physical universe of the natural neteru as

  well.

  It is the ka that, through the ab, enters the natural

  universe through “identity gates” such as pictures or

  statues of the individual, or utterance of the individual’s

  name(s) (the ren), as well as through conducive locales

  such as temples and geological & architectural anomalies.

  While the ba may, particularly posthumously, lose

  awareness of itself through the paradoxical expansion of

  that consciousness into its entire perceptive field, the ka

  remains immortally finite, distinct, and otherness-

  separate. Thus in an expressive, active sense it becomes

  the externally-identifiable individual beyond physical

  death.

  Nowhere is the ka better illustrated than in initiate

  Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars. Film treatments

  of this work, such as Hammer’s Blood from the Mummy’s

  Tomb and the more recent The Awakening, have done it

  a grotesque disservice. In Stoker’s original text it is in no

  sense a horror story, but rather a fascinating and

  romantic mystery: Who was Tera of ancient Egypt, this

  marvelous sorceress-queen who took with her to her

  - 80 -

  tomb only a ruby scarab inscribed with the constellation

  of the Thigh of Set (our “Great Bear”) and the hieroglyphs

  mer (love) and men ab (patience)? Listen to the words of

  the woman of our own era with whose ka Tera came

  gently to merge:

  I can see her in her loneliness and in the silence of

  her mighty pride, dreaming her own dream of things

  far different from those around her. Of some other

  land, far away under the canopy of the silent night, lit

  by the cool, beautiful light of the stars. A land under

  that Northern star, whence blew the sweet winds that

  cooled the feverish desert air. A land of wholesome

  greenery, far, far away. Where were no scheming and

  malignant priesthood; whose ideas were to lead to

  power through gloomy temples and more gloomy

  caverns of the dead, through an endless ritual of death!

  A land where love was not base, but a divine possession

  of the soul! Where there might be some one kindred

  spirit which could speak to hers through mortal lips

  like her own; whose being could merge with hers in a

  sweet communion of soul to soul, even as their breaths

  could mingle in the ambient air! I know the feeling, for

  I have shared it myself. I may speak of it now, since the

  blessing has come into my own life. I may speak of it

  since it enables me to interpret the feelings, the very

  longing soul, of that sweet and lovely Queen, so

  different from her surroundings, so high above her

  time! Whose nature, put into a word, could control the

  forces of the Under World; and the name of whose

  aspiration, though but graven on a star-lit jewel, could

  command all the powers in the Pantheon of the High

  Gods. And in the realisation of that dream she will

  surely be content to rest!

  In Love and Patience we are taught the secret of true

  immortality - not the repulsive reanimation of corpses

  ( anastasis nekron) of Christianity, nor the vague

  confusion of reincarnationists - but the infinite radiance

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  of one’s MS by its most magnificent expression, and with

  a serene transcendence of natural time.

  The last two souls are unique in that they must arise

  from the individual, and require initiate consciousness to

  do so, per the formula Xepera Xeper Xeperu (“I Have

  Come Into Being and Created That Which Has Come Into

  Being.”).

  7. Sekhem

  The neter-emanation. While the term sekhem is

  ordinarily translated as “power”, this is misleading,

  because it is power in a very rarified sense - that

  emanating from the neteru themselves. For this reason it

  is also described as “the power of the stars” through

  which the neteru manifest in the natural universe. The

  sekhem combines with the ab (as, in effect, a temple

  within one’s consciousness), to draw down the essence of

  one or more adored neteru to indwell therein.

  Activation of the sekhem has another effect: every

  incidence infuses the Initiate with more of the neter

  invoked, to the cumulative degree that the Initiate’s

  personality becomes accented by the neter’s: seeing as

  that neter sees, speaking as that neter would speak,

  acting as that neter would act. Hence it is the sekhem

  which makes possible, and ultimately consecrates

  priesthood of a neter in the individual so aligned. Once

  this transformation has taken place, it cannot be undone;

  at most it may be sublimated or repressed, but only at

  great cost to the priest’s or priestess’ very sanity.

  8. Akh

  The star-emanation. Beyond the priesthood of the

  sekhem is the akh, in which the Initiate rises to the

  company of the neteru as one of their essence, if not of

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  them absolutely. Such one is indistinguishable from the

  actual neteru except by the neteru themselves. Such a

  mode of existence departs completely from all concern

  with physical displacement within natural-universal

  references or boundaries, manifestation, or action, and

  affects otherness only by the radiance of its presence.

  While it does not destroy any of the other emanations, it

  permeates all of them, such that henceforth they all exist

  in conformity and concert with it.

  9. Conventionalist Blinders

  What conventional Egyptology calls the “Egyptian

  soul” varies from three to eleven “parts” taken arbitrarily

  from the multitude of Old & New Kingdom magical and

  funerary texts favored by the Egyptologist offering his

  “translation”. What quickly becomes commonly evident is

  that these treat the entire subject, as indeed the rest of

&nbs
p; Egyptian metaphysics, as nothing more than a primitive

  fairytale: an entertaining curiosity but certainly nothing

  to take seriously or apply as a key to reality. Only from

  the Symbolists, who do not make the fatal mistake of

  regarding hieroglyphs as nothing more than an alphabet,

  can the modern mind move, as herein, beyond the

  superficial and “quaintly silly” to the authentically

  experiential: the apprehension of the true, immortal, and

  eternal MS. All one need do is to focus one’s conscious

  past the physical-sensory prison of the khat.

  As you seek and find each emanation, you will realize

  it suprarationally, beyond the limitations of khat-

  realm alphabetics. Expect this; don’t make the mistake of

  dismissing it as “mere imagination”. You are unlocking a

  far greater reality, not merely corrupting the most crude

  and confining physical-sensory illusion of it.

  - 83 -

  Chapter 6: MindStar Activity

  ... And travellers now within that valley,

  Through the red-litten windows see

  Vast forms that move fantastically

  To a discordant melody;

  While, like a rapid ghastly river,

  Through the pale door;

  A hideous throng rush out forever,

  And laugh - but smile no more.

  - Edgar Allan Poe

  The Fall of the House of Usher

  A. Metaphysical Evidence

  To this point we have discarded inaccurate and

  incoherent representations of the “soul”, discussed how a

  purely-metaphysical locus of conscious existence (MS)

  can interact with an incarnate body in the OU through

  field functionality, and returned through anamnesis to

  the original Egyptian MS emanations.

  Within its familiar realm of OU-studies, physical

  science identifies and classifies phenomena, the natural

  laws governing them, through observation and repeat-

  experimentation (the “scientific method”).

  How can the purely-metaphysical MS be similarly

  verified and “tracked” if it cannot be compared and

  contrasted to anything besides itself? The answer is that

  - 84 -

  if incarnate humans cannot “see” the MS through any OU

  medium, they can accomplish the same identification and

  validation by looking at its “reflection”: its activity in the

  course of both individual and group events.

  Once again the ancient Greeks, after their Egyptian

 

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