The main reason I started writing in this blog space was a fascination with ancient Egypt due to my obsession with their religious beliefs. As I have progressed along my own spiritual path, it has remained a bedrock for me though I have followed a trajectory that has led me towards other civilizations and their myths and archetypes; all which I have found useful as I formed my own beliefs. I am actually a little bit proud I never fell for any of the systems out there in the spiritual supermarket trying their best to pull me in but instead focused on developing my own story and version of the truth of existence. I wouldn’t take my word for it or even believe what I have to tell you but as a narrative of my own construction I am quite content with all I have learnt and now understand. It’s quite amazing that here I am over twelve years later and I’ve circled back to ancient Egypt because of just how profound is the myth of Horus and Set. The ancient Egyptian ideas of the Ba and the Ka, as represented by the warring deities Horus and Set, have been a constant on this path I travel. The iconic ancient Egyptian narrative of this mythic battle called, ‘The Contendings of Horus and Set’ lays bare the inner psychological battle for mastery between the light and the dark that manifests into your everyday life.
The Greeks defined this dualistic notion of the conceptions of life as bios and zoë. Biological life is the idea behind the resurrection and the new sprouting grain at the beginning of the growing season. It is victory over death that has become the heart of a great deal of religious traditions in the west. This power in ancient Egypt is inherent in Osiris, who is killed by his brother - this monster Set, and then is resurrected in order to impregnate his wife Isis, who in turn births the son Horus. Horus grows up and battles Set in order to avenge his father as well as battle for the crown of his father. This story is enacted over and over again in the cultural milieu of ancient Egypt. The son Horus becomes the father and impregnates the mother who gives birth to the renewal of life and the chain of heredity lives on in the Pharaoh, warts and all. This power inherent in Osiris is then subjugated to the underground realm and gives impetus to the renewal and coming forth of all biological life. Where you find the presence of the conditions for life in combination with indestructible life, the zoë, you will have the rise of biological life.
In the myth, why does Set kill Osiris? If Set is the personification of the indestructible life force why does he naturally kill Osiris as representative of biological life? It is because the power of Set propels creation along through motion which creates the illusion of time. Time is lethal to all biological life. All forms, harbingers of biology, disintegrate through natural decay.
Humans are greedy, needy, and want to cling to this transient life we lead. The truth and conception of biological life is perverted in western religion into a concept of a resurrection of the body and subsequent immortality. That’s not science! Isn’t that funny; I’m invoking science into religion, ha ha. No, seriously, when biological life expires then the conception of who you are is dead. Kaput. See ya. The energy pattern that defines you in biological terms, if it is to continue on, will do so in your offspring and so forth. Your progeny carries on with your energy pattern, along with all your ancestors. That is undeniably biological life. For some that is a blessing and for some it is a curse.
That sounds cool but what about me? I want to live forever! You already do. You’re indestructible. Each biological manifestation of your Ka is called in ancient Egypt your double made from your master Ka. This is the zoë or as the ancient Egyptians called it, the Ka. It is represented by the ridiculously strong, powerful, and magical god Set. In the myths, Set is fighting for supremacy with the representatives of the Ba power who are Osiris and Horus. Eventually, Set is defeated and forced to leave the empire. What is surprising is this is reflected culturally in Egypt at the time as the downfall of their 3000-year empire. Seriously, when Set became anathema to Egyptian society, it eventually fell apart and collapsed. So, what is this power? It’s the life force that gives rise to all forms created by the feminine creative power. Where and how do I find and recognize this power? It’s your shadow; that voice deep within that is your master teacher, misunderstood and relegated to the demonic, that is teaching you to become the ultimate warrior through stress and challenge. He has no qualms about killing you if he must because he knows life is indestructible. Why do I want this? What’s in it for me? You want to live forever, right? This is your vehicle to enable that. Your shadow, the master teacher, is your boat that will sail you on into eternity and beyond. That’s right you can live on in perpetuity in two modalities: through bios and zoë. The ancient Egyptians even recognized this combination and called it the Akh.
It is a luminous being; today we would recognize it as a concept of enlightenment. What is being shown in this iconography is the merging of bios and zoë into a new power. From my standpoint, it looks like a conception of how to achieve conscious eternal life. The reason I say that is it seems that biological life is conscious but perishable. Indestructible life, the zoë, is subconscious and uses biological life to gain a foothold into consciousness. In the advanced thinking of the spiritual masters of ancient Egypt, they seem to have envisioned a vehicle that combines the two.
It presents to me with an interesting conception of the word enlightenment that we throw around nowadays. If you’re awake, preach love, and declare we are all one that usually gets you into the E-club though some celebrity and followers help back up your claim. Sorry about my sarcasm here. Anyways, I’m intrigued by this conception of enlightenment that my spiritual journey and probing into understanding what life is all about has unearthed. What do I know? It took me a while to admit it but I’m fully comfortable with the demon within; I’m bipolar and I have progressed in my journey from being scared and wanting to get rid of him into understanding he is my master teacher who means well in a very peculiar way. He’s transforming me into the ultimate warrior. So, I can see now that if we are to combine into this luminous being, he needs to forge steel out of the raw material I gave him to work with.
A favourite intellectual game of mine is to challenge prejudices and hierarchies. The life force is dominant and biological life cannot exist without this power. Because of this knowledge, my natural inclination is to believe that the king is the life force. Shouldn’t Set be one up on both Osiris and Horus in the ancient Egyptian pantheon because he is not subject to death? Not so fast… The life force is indestructible power however to come forth as self-aware it requires the manifestation of biological life. This is how the energy expresses itself and because the energy is a pulse, biological life by nature repeatedly comes and goes into consciousness. Biological life coming forth thus births two entries into conscious form: The bios and the zoë, imagined in ancient Egypt as the brothers Osiris and Set. To play the game they need each other. Without each other they are but potential. This is one of my favourite images from ancient Egypt, found in the Papyrus Jumilhac, because it explains so much. The bull depicted here is the life force as Set and this powerful animal is carrying Osiris as biological life. The two are exoterically opposed but secretly in the esoteric mystery, they need each other. In the far left panel is the son Horus with his father Osiris to his left, inert on a bier. Horus stands on a hippopotamus with his spear in dominant fashion. The hippo represents Set. The image is reminding us how we use the life force to give rise to our biological form and then subjugate and bury this power henceforth why I found it buried within the shadow. The middle frame shows Osiris without his phallus; the phallus being the representative of the masculine life force power.
Indulge me if you will because I want to show you how this myth is my story and it’s your story.
The masculine voice that talks to you when altering your consciousness is your shadow; it’s the hidden and indestructible zoë. The nature of psychedelics that is among the most frightening experiences within this human existence, at least for me, is the ability to access the darkness that lies within. There’s nothing to prepare you for it; nor can I try and explain or teach you how to approach this aspect of self. We all will react differently as a first timer. The game is on. It’s a game that can last years if the initial foray is not game over for you. Running from the fear is totally understandable. Fighting back is heroic. Understanding what is going on is next level. Suffice to say, this entity is your master teacher. Do with this information what you will. Approach with caution.
Some of my early Ayahuasca visions and encounters make a lot of sense now almost eight years later. My first foray into the unknown was an encounter with the sacred feminine who wanted me to come away with her. I understand it now as motherly instinct to protect; knowing that what I was going up against could kill me so she wanted to shield me from this situation. When I protested and said I was not done with my earthly incarnation and voyage, she offered me a cloak of protection against my enemies and told me I could call on her at any time. I didn’t know what she meant or why she was offering these items. The second ceremony I quickly learned why as the darkness came and steamrolled me. It was the worst night of my life; a thorough beat down. The third ceremony, the masculine voice came again and showed me paths: Paths to power and a path out of this predicament where I would just drop the idea of plant medicines. I declined the path to power and ran home where I mulled my options. I like adventure and I like knowledge. The fear activated within counselled me to drop the plant medicine path; my inner fortitude beckoned me to continue.
I enlisted the help of the Goddess and got up off the mat. Slowly, I regained my composure and set off to once again engage the subconscious. On came the attacks; the fits of panic and doubt; and the thoughts to stay away from the experience. I returned and I battled. Once I got a leg up, was a vision where the Goddess told me to take up my sword and go after this darkness. She then revealed this darkness was her husband and he kept her locked away in this castle made of gold. I made plans to defeat this enemy, eventually concluding the enemy was a part of me. I also couldn’t understand why she married this guy in the first place? I think there was a Star Wars moment in here somewhere where I realized the darkness was my father and I came to defeat him. I kept developing my new-found strength and soon within a ceremony I transformed into a jaguar, thus revealing that within me was now the recognition and available power of the life force along with my biological life. One of the most important concepts I learned on this path to power was to open the heart and run everything through the heart. This is paramount and without these lessons power will destroy you.
From this point forward in time, I had mastered fear and a four-year period ensued where I developed an amazing clarity of this game. The culmination occurred in the last few months where I put all the pieces together; added it all up and realized this darkness within, the shadow, is the master teacher and the holder of a vast reservoir of power available to me if I so choose to take it. The master teacher gives lessons in becoming a man, a warrior, and is a fount of wisdom. As I said earlier in this piece, it is through biological life that the zoë manifests. It is through my vessel that the master can transmit his traits. He does it through jaguar training school. If you choose to enrol, it can become a game of life and death and there are no training wheels to be offered. I can’t recommend it because it can be deadly.
It is hard to accept what I have learned on this path I chose. I became a man of knowledge and this knowledge can be a little unnerving and hard to both acquire and come to terms with. Cultural indoctrination runs deep and the natural inclination is to deny what you are being shown. My run in with my buried shadow, a man stomped out by culture, I never expected to turn out this way. He was a bad man who scared the shit out of me. I was shocked to learn of his identity and to learn of his methods for teaching me to become a warrior. To be like the master.
So, that my friends is the journey where the Ka, as the life force, uses the Ba for the manifestation into consciousness of its power. The relationship is symbiotic and necessary in order for actualization of the potential that lies within the life force. It’s why as a teacher this power is relentless and accepts only mastery. Who you may think is your greatest enemy could be in fact your greatest teacher. A previously unfathomable outcome is now within reach.
I returned to the teachings of the sages of ancient Egypt from a time long ago because as the knowledge turns into understanding I have come to realize that what they taught is what I have independently verified. The myths of Horus of Set and their constant fighting mirrors my own internal struggle and recently I was able to separate it out into the bipolar nature of my being that were in essence my biological life and the universal life force behind life which the Greeks called bios and zoë and from a masculine point of view are the Greek Apollo and Dionysos. What the masters of ancient Egypt taught was you can harmonize these two into one called an Akh. I haven’t reached that point and I can’t verify if it is true however I have no reason to not believe them because what they have taught up until now on my path has been remarkably the real deal, if you can understand metaphor and throw off cultural misconceptions. When I researched this concept of Akh further, I came across the identification of the bird to which it was most likely referring and that bird is a heron. Observing a heron in the wild you will notice its call is a penetrating, “ack, ack, ack.” I’ve heard it before and I have commented to myself it sounds like a dinosaur. Anyway, as my understanding increases the omens take form. Around the pond where I walk the dog at night, a heron has taken up residence, calls out in the night time sky, “ack, ack, ack,” and glides to its nest over top of me. Of course it does, I thought to myself. I’m on the verge of its secret.
The butterfly comes forth from the caterpillar in this lifetime. It is interesting to project this transformation out among say many lifetimes and think about our own lives. If you view our energetic form as constructed as eternal then reincarnation into different biological containers becomes a plausible idea. What would be the purpose behind reincarnation? For fun and adventure? Possibly. Desire? That’s a big one. Or are they all elements of the game and the game is transformation along the lines of the example set by the butterfly. Eventually, we will transform our biological impetus in combination with the eternal life force that powers us up into the shining radiant entity called the Akh. Perhaps this is all fanciful speculation but I do know the butterfly is the most common symbol I come across when I access altered states of consciousness. Its behaviour must be pointing me towards something I can figure out the more knowledge I synthesize on this incredible journey.
