Ancient Egypt

Like many people I have long been fascinated by ancient Egypt and its otherworldliness. Despite its strangeness it seems to capture something profound and mysterious about humanity in a way that is not seen anywhere else. There really is something magical about Egypt. I have visited the country twice and each time coincided with a dramatic change in my life.

The first time I went there was in 1978. This was shortly after I had become interested in spirituality and a few months before I went to live with Michael Lord. So, an ideal time really as I was ready to absorb the deeper message of Egypt. My eyes had begun to be opened to the inner truths of life and Egypt was the perfect place to take that further since the whole ancient Egyptian civilisation was based on the understanding that this world was a reflection of a higher reality. Ancient Egypt was dedicated to manifesting that reality by living life on earth according to the pattern of heaven. Literally so in some instances as many of the Egyptian gods were star gods. For example, Isis was linked to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, and her consort Osiris was connected to the constellation Orion.

The 3 stars of Orion's belt (upper centre) point down to Sirius

I first arrived in Egypt at the port of Alexandria, coming on a boat from Piraeus in Greece. Alexandria was and is an East meets West type of city, combining elements of Greece and Egypt and making of them something that might justly be regarded as the intellectual seed of the modern world. I mean that in a positive sense. The destruction of its ancient library is widely regarded as one of the great cultural tragedies of the world in which a vast amount of pagan wisdom was lost but Alexandria was also a major centre of early Christianity. Its patriarchate was supposedly founded by St Mark around 40 AD and later on many of the Church Fathers such as Clement, Origen and Athanasius lived and taught there. At the same time, Alexandria was home to Neoplatonic philosophers of the order of Plotinus and Hypatia. Oddly enough, not long before I visited the city I had read Charles Kingsley's novel about this famous female philosopher who was murdered by a Christian mob and whose virtues might even have been incorporated into the myths about St Catherine. All of which is to say that in the early centuries of the first millennium Alexandria was a city that was home to the best and brightest of both Christians and pagans. If any one place was the birthplace of the modern world it was perhaps Alexandria but it also contained within itself the wisdom of the past.

From Alexandria I took a train to Cairo where I spent the next couple of weeks. I couldn't go further south because at that time such trains as there were, which was not many, were all booked up for the next month which seems strange now but it was a simpler time with fewer tourist facilities. As it turned out, that was a fortuitous circumstance because it gave me more time to explore Cairo itself and the Giza plateau.

I wasn't too thrilled with Cairo at first. It seemed chaotic, dirty and smelly not to mention very hot. But I soon got over that and began to appreciate what you might call the authenticity of the place though this was helped by the fact that there still existed at that time those old colonial style clubs from the 1930s where you could have an ice cold beer under a fan and all was gleaming brass and shiny brown leather with immaculately dressed waiters in white uniforms topped off by a bright red fez. But my hotel was not like that. Basic sums it up but it was certainly cheap and served a nice guava jelly at breakfast.

On several occasions I went off to see the pyramids. If I had been able to go down (or is it up in Egyptian terms?) to Luxor I probably would have gone only once but being restricted to Cairo meant I could take more time in exploring the whole area in and around Giza including the little village, as it was then, that had grown up in the vicinity. I spent some time walking around all three pyramids and the Sphinx and also investigated some of the smaller structures that are there. I even went a little way out into the desert, this being the first time I had ever seen a real desert. Its great emptiness and expanse makes it an apt symbol for the boundless infinity of universal spirit and a fit object for the contemplation of eternal things. 

In complete contrast to the the desert was the interior of the Great Pyramid. These represent two spiritual extremes, eye-achingly bright light and deep darkness, wide open space and the drawing in of everything to a still centre in which all power seems to be concentrated. This is the King's Chamber located in the heart of the Great Pyramid. To reach it you must go through an outside entrance located about 20 feet above ground, not the original entrance but one cut later, and then descend by a narrow passageway a short distance before reascending by another passageway which, like the first, is only about 3 feet high so you have to bend your head, symbolically significant, no doubt. You then reach the impressive Grand Gallery which at 28 feet high and around 150 feet long conveys a strong sense of ceremony and grandeur as though it leads to somewhere of importance.

Which, of course, it does. At the top of the gallery there is a short tunnel that leads through a small antechamber into the King's Chamber. Before going to Egypt I had read A Search in Secret Egypt by Paul Brunton which was first published in 1935 in which he describes a night spent alone in the King's Chamber and the strange experience that befell him there. Now, I don't necessarily believe everything Brunton says. He was a journalist and had a journalist's imagination, but he was also a good writer and introduced many people in the West to Indian philosophy. His two travel/spiritual books about India and Egypt are still very much worth reading, and he had many insights into all aspects of the mystical and esoteric. I owe him a spiritual debt which I am happy to acknowledge. Whether he really did have the experience he describes in which during his night alone in the King's Chamber he was initiated into the mysteries of the after death state by the psychic forms of ancient Egyptian High Priests I can't say. But it's not impossible. The King's Chamber is a deeply mysterious place and it may well have served as a sanctuary for the initiation of qualified candidates into the Mysteries. Egyptologists maintain it was merely a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu but it is remarkably plain with undecorated walls and an austerity that is not what you would expect for a pharaoh. I didn't spend a night there but I was alone in the chamber for 10 minutes or so and there certainly was, as Brunton says, "a powerful atmosphere".

The King's Chamber with sarcophagus

My copy from 1977

An Egyptian pound note from 1978 I found inside the book which I must have kept as a bookmark

On another occasion I climbed to the top of the third and smallest pyramid which is the one thought to have served as the tomb of the pharaoh Menkaure from the 4th Dynasty, around 2,600 BC. It is only around 200 feet high now as compared with the Great Pyramid which was originally around 480 feet high though is a bit smaller today. It was still a scramble to get up though and I needed a local guide to show the way or, at least, that's what he told me. Today I disapprove of myself for doing this as it obviously damages the pyramids to have tourists clambering all over them which is why it is not allowed, but still the view from the top across the great desert under the burning Egyptian sun was quite stunning. 

I like to imagine that there are three pyramids because of the triplicities to be found throughout nature, not least in the spirit, soul and body constitution of the human being. In this parallel Menkaure's pyramid would probably refer to the body as it is the last built and the least important. But it is still part of the whole and not to be discounted by any means.

The pyramids and the Sphinx belong to a world which is not ours in any sense at all. But they impress us as representing something profound and true. They speak to us from across the millennia, calling us back to something important we have forgotten. How many millennia? Official Egyptology puts it at around four and a half but then the water erosion on the Sphinx implies that at least to be much older, maybe even dating back to the end of the last Ice Age which was around 9,700 BC. Curiously, Paul Brunton writing in 1935 also thought the Sphinx was much older than established academic sources allow. He says that to "the Fourth Dynasty Pharaohs the Sphinx was already unutterably aged", and that those regarded as building it merely restored it. He relates a vision he had while contemplating the Sphinx at night "of men with long and hard faces and reddish brown skin" carving out the monument and then how after centuries had gone by and the men had long departed a huge wall of water swept over it. The Deluge! 

                                 The Sphinx with the Menkaure Pyramid in the background

Does the Sphinx date back to before the Flood? The water erosion evidence does appear to support that. All I can say is that when I first visited it in 1978 it did not seem at all far-fetched that it was many thousands of years older than recorded history, even ancient history. There is something about it that belongs to an epoch when the gods were still present on Earth which means a time when spirit and matter had not separated and the radiance of eternity still illumined the world.