it's all perfect

I stand before my Mesa and know it's all perfect. My overarching desire to be the eternal student is fulfilled when I listen to the Great Goddess and the Great God, all the while following the way of Ma'at. Ma'at is the ancient Egyptian expression of the natural order of things which flows. Ma'at is Tao. We perceive order as cyclical and our human minds rail against forces which impede this balanced procession. The ancient Egyptians were no different and denigrated those who would interrupt the march of eternity. The Pharaoh was responsible for upholding Ma'at - this was their chief concern. I honour what it is they believed as it was national in scope. What I mean is that they believed Egypt should always be the dominant power as part of Ma'at, and any interruptions to the flow would lead to upending the world order. In my thinking this was not true to the spirit of Ma'at. Natural order is not orderly at all, instead, within order is found a bedrock of chaos.

The chief culprit of disorder in ancient Egypt eventually was assigned to the god Set. Study of ancient Egypt reveals this was not always so as originally Set upheld Ma'at while in the sun-boat of Re. Chaos was the domain of the serpent Apophis who plotted to disrupt the voyage of the sun through the gates of the night. It was Set at the prow of the sun-boat who fended off the advances of nightfall and subsequent disorder.

Conversely, the power of Set as a separator was said to cause celestial eclipses which portend tough times ahead. Set was the god of the foreign invaders. When attempts at appeasement failed, the later dynastic rulers of Egypt along with the populace, tried to erase his memory from the monuments, not speak his name, substitute Thoth as a placeholder who ties the lands of Egypt together with Horus, and finally chased Set out of the land.

I suffer from lone wolf syndrome and what I mean is I take in knowledge, and I compare it to my own experience. I don't buy into anyone's system, chiefly matters of the divine. I respect everyone's path and choices; however, I won't be worshipping your god. I'll be curious about it and ask questions, but I've got my own treasure trove of understanding going on which has been accumulated over multiple forays into altered consciousness combined with an inordinate amount of study. With much conceit I will say that in my world I'm the number one theologian. I sit in silent arrogance.

A dependable world of order offers little fulfillment. A novel which lacks novelty is not a good read. A life which lacks challenge and adversity is boring. Drama makes the life journey compelling. Sure, we want to take a break from the rollercoaster, find peace, and plant our gardens, but eventually the siren call of adventure calls out to us. My life has been harangued by desires and wanting to fulfill these longings. The call to adventure has brought great upset into my orderly life. What I want I can get, and I don't factor in the consequences. The result of desire fulfillment moves the drama along and introduced is pain and suffering as an outcome. It's cyclical and passes, though the scars remain. Once your ship sails on through the tumult, the grace of understanding opens up to you. The Setian voice within whispers to me, "You wanted to suffer because this is the catalyst for what you really desire." If you want complete understanding of consciousness, suffering is going to be your guide. I'm not saying I'll ever figure this puzzle out 100%, but I'll go as far as I can before my game ends.

The divine wears many disguises and an understanding of this helps you when you encounter their many manifestations as part of the incredible consciousness journey. I used to get scared of the costume, now I smile. The Great God comes to me in a celebration of diversity. I alter my consciousness just a little and I connect. How will he teach me this time? I like it when he comes as Dionysos. I can connect my unapproved thoughts and feelings to God - how freeing is that? All the things you were told by society that are unwelcome as a pious and moral being in service to the divine are waved away with the wink of an eye. God gets horny? Cool. God is the alpha dragon and seeing the divine within allows you to merge with your latent divinity and you can guess at the result. Don't mess with me. Today he is Christ, teaching feminine principles of love and unity. If I can keep him externalized, he is my salvation. When you discover who you are it's a game changer, but you still play the game while others remain asleep and ignorant.

The Great Goddess shows me a love which I have never experienced and then she allows me to partake in an eroticism so charged with lust I lose my mind. As I fall for her deeply, she flips, and Medusa strikes. In ancient Egypt, her iconography is the cobra. I took my time figuring that one out. I was prepared for the poison so though it hurts and causes damage, I make it through the suffering and live to tell the tale. Pleasure and pain intertwine as she readies for the next lesson. It is in the suffering inculcated by the darkness of the feminine that I learn the most. When the poison clears, I have clarity on what caused the serpent to strike. The path of eternity teaches me these lessons she wants me to learn. The feminine is working through her own hurt and when we both find a path towards reconciliation, we will recombine into one. Is this in the cards for this story? Will there be a happy ending? I don't know. Perhaps a sequel will need to be written with an open-ended climax. Uncertainty surrounds our story, and thus the curtain will not fall on this production yet.

I'll keep writing. Life is a book that must be written as it goes, and it needs readers and actors. That's where we all come in. We all participate in the great drama of Dionysos. We read his divine poetry making this play come alive. I look forward to feasting, revelry, and much joy as we recount this tale and honour the eternal fairy tale. Pain and pleasure. Tragedy and triumph.

Thank you, Goddess and God.

he with the two faces

I started reading the Bible word for word about 12 years ago. And that's not just a cliche, I went through every word. I looked up the meaning of every word in a concordance. I was manic and under some spell to decipher meaning from these ancient texts. It was all part of my middle age crisis where I was determined to find the origin of beliefs. I wanted to find out why humans throughout history have had a belief in a higher power. Superstitions play a part in it but at one point in our history there were no atheists; well, there were a small minority who kept quiet about it. I found it compelling there wasn't more dissent and convinced myself our ancestors had more access to the divine. I then set out on a path to find out what the access was, which led me to shamanism, and then into the Amazon jungle and the potent decoction called Ayahuasca. It seemed clear to me that the suppression of consciousness altering substances would lead to a decline in religious and spiritual beliefs and only those who could go on faith and the intercession of a priest could and would remain in a relationship with higher powers.

I was naively introduced to psychedelics ten years ago and was immediately catapulted into the world of spirit. First contact was with the Great Goddess and subsequently I've met some of the all-time greats! My quest for the origin of beliefs ended about twenty minutes after drinking my first cup of Ayahuasca.

Further exploration of the psyche took me to many places and along the way I've retained my knowledge of the Bible though by no means do I consider myself of the Book. I know the characters, the motifs, and the mysteries hidden by the stories. My favourite is the relationship of the first born to the second born. This motif is pronounced in the stories of Cain and Abel, and Esau and Jacob. We also see Jacob bless Joseph's two sons Manasseh and Ephraim and he crosses his arms so that Ephraim, the second born, receives the blessing of the first born just as Jacob had usurped these gifts from his first born brother Esau. Here's the description of the blessing transference from Genesis chapter 48, New International Version.

12 Then Joseph removed them from Israel’s knees and bowed down with his face to the ground.

13 And Joseph took both of them, Ephraim on his right toward Israel’s left hand and Manasseh on his left toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them close to him.

14 But Israel reached out his right hand and put it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and crossing his arms, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, even though Manasseh was the firstborn.

My first love in gathering knowledge to fulfill my mission was studying the ancient Egyptians. I am captivated by the story called, "The Contendings of Horus and Set" which depicts a lifelong struggle between adversaries for the crown of the murdered Osiris. Horus is the son of Osiris and Set is the brother. Though Horus and Set are not brothers but uncle and nephew, the hidden meaning revolves around this war within you for dominance which the Bible refers to as brothers.

In my own life I have felt this for as long as I can remember though full acknowledgement didn't come until I was over four years into my psychedelic journey. I would encounter another half of me, scare myself, externalize the situation, run from him, and then try to convince myself to stay away from altering my consciousness. I was frightened though curious at the same time. I did get past the fright and then was able to explore deeper. I fully accepted the other half of me about five years ago and have explored that relationship. The part of me that has taken centre stage in this lifetime can't be trusted and waffles. I originally locked away my other half upon coming of age, so in response the shadow part of me now has ensured I won't do it again. It's for the best. He told me in 2020 that I need to kill myself in order to live. I was spinning my wheels going nowhere, taking us both down. The pandemic locked us down and Magic Mushrooms allowed me to have an airing of grievances with my shadow. We hashed out our differences and became friends who understand each other. I help him and he helps me. I'm the pretty face to the construct and he will get us to where we need to be.

I thought of those who let their darkness run their lives. They are the one's seeking power; they are greedy; they are lustful. These are the people that make earth a miserable place. Is that my future if I let my shadow start running the me show? I pondered my predicament when the voice from within said it is not so. I have the advantage of knowing of this split within the man, acknowledging it, and entering a partnership. For everyone else, it is a struggle for mastery. At this point it was my shadow who directed me to my knowledge of mythology and my intimate knowledge of the Bible and God. The Old Testament God is the supreme Alpha male, and he comes forth in all first born. The story of the Israelites is the veneration of God through the first born and then taking the birthright of the first born for their people. The rightful owners of the birthright are the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Esau.

Cain couldn't handle the birthright and as the original first born he became jealous of his brother and then smashed his head in with a rock. From this encounter is derived eternal animosity. In the Old Testament the Israelites schemed to take the birthright as well as crossing the arms to transfer the blessing from first born to second born. I bet you never have understood or seen this explained before. Instead, you just read a bunch of Biblical stories and allowed some other ignorant theologian to explain it. Sorry to be so dismissive but sometimes the truth slaps you in the face. Cain is expelled from society and sent to wander the Earth. Here are the passages from Genesis chapter 4 NIV to which I’m referring.

10 The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

Cain is doomed to wander the Earth in perpetuity. As the first born, Cain is the spirit of the Alpha male come to incarnate. He is an angel of God. The angel of God in the Old Testament is a wanderer, just like Cain. How do I know this? Well, check out these passages from Zechariah chapter 1 NIV.

8 During the night I had a vision, and there before me was a man mounted on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in a ravine. Behind him were red, brown and white horses.

9 I asked, “What are these, my lord?” The angel who was talking with me answered, “I will show you what they are.”

10 Then the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, “They are the ones the Lord has sent to go throughout the earth.”

11 And they reported to the angel of the Lord who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have gone throughout the earth and found the whole world at rest and in peace.”

The four horsemen of the apocalypse from the New Testament Book of Revelation are mentioned here in the Old Testament. The angel of the Lord is the leader of this group who wander the Earth, stirring up trouble whenever they find peace. The angel of God rides a red horse. The association of red to war, the alpha male, to the first born, and to God himself is not lost on anyone with a capacity for synthesis of ideas present in the Bible. God is the Lord of Hosts. Hosts means armies. First born males are described as red and ruddy. It is the meaning of the name Adam. Esau got the nickname Edom, which means red. God in heaven is the colour red. Don't believe me? Check out these passages from Revelation chapter 4, NIV.

1 After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne.

Other translations describe a carnelian stone which is a translucent red. I present these passages to demonstrate that Jacob's brother Esau is a first born angel of God. Jacob steals the birthright and blessing from a hapless Esau. In Genesis chapter 32 NIV is the famous story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God after trying to run from him.

24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.

25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Jacob subsequently named the place “Peniel” because he saw the face of God in the angel. Immediately following this story is a reconciliation of Jacob with Esau. Seeing Esau, he once again sees the reflection of God, revealing that if you want to re-discover what is lost the answer is found within. Here are the passages from Genesis chapter 33 NIV to which I’m referring.

1 Jacob looked up and there was Esau, coming with his four hundred men; so he divided the children among Leah, Rachel and the two female servants.

2 He put the female servants and their children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear.

3 He himself went on ahead and bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother.

4 But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.

The bowing seven times is a major clue letting us know what Jacob is seeing. He's swearing an oath on his life to God. Jacob offers his brother plenteous gifts of his bounty and Esau declines.

10 “No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.

Jacob sees the face of God in Esau and thus for the perceptive among us we are shown that it is through the reconciliation of the two faces within, our own personal Horus and Set, that we become whole and reclaim the power we had carelessly thrown away in order to just fit into culture. Thus, the psychic split within us is revealed through the story of Jacob and Esau. We are both god. I come forth. I'm the usurper of the throne who is the Jacob of the Old Testament. My shadow as the omniscient life force is relegated to the dark. Remember the angel of God telling Jacob when they were wrestling, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” We both have monotheistic tendencies, and the resultant backlash and gambit of the Alpha is to be the voice within and to be worshipped as God.

The enmity between the two inhabiters of the body fuels the disease within. The reconciliation of the contending halves of self for the crown recreates the divine masculine. The wholeness results from the two faces of God again becoming whole. This is the grand narrative of life for the man, interspersed with calls to adventure.

long past start

"I wish to confront my destructive dark side in order to get closure on that part of my life and turn it into a strength. It is the reconciliation of Horus and Set warring inside me I wish to confront and turn into a positive."

Before I drank Ayahuasca for the first time I told the shaman of this intention. It’s been a hellish kind of ride but ten years later here we are. Plant medicines will address all your intentions in a reciprocal arrangement if you do the same. The second time I drank Ayahuasca my shadow KO’ed me and the idea of turning this into a positive was long gone at that point. Here I am now marvelling at the relationship I have with my shadow. The fulfillment of this intention was not instantaneous but instead a long and winding road, full of twists and turns. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I strongly encourage recording all thoughts and feelings as much as possible as you embark upon this journey. I knew of my intention to confront my dark side, but I had forgotten the part where I said I wanted to turn it into a positive. Imagine my incredulity when I rediscovered that intention after all that has happened to me; I mean after the initial beatdown, positivity was thrown overboard, and it became a game of survival. I am sure there are many available paths to the seeker; I’ll champion the plant medicine path as supreme. At least it was from my standpoint.

As I take the course offered by the master teacher everything starts to become clear. All the visions and events that scared me silly during my initial foray onto this path have been revealed to be the truth. My shadow was just showing me the truth of the human predicament, albeit in a mysterious and ominous tone, however there was nothing deceitful about it. Why was I scared and why did I run? Well, culture told me I shouldn’t be in these realms; I shouldn’t be interacting with this guy; and even the plant medicine practitioners and guides pointed me towards seeking love and light and leaving this place alone. This place kept returning during ceremony and once I became somewhat used to it, curiosity got the better of this cat.

What became clear is Ayahuasca clearly soaks up the energy and intentions of those around her. This manifested in visions of greed concerning some operators of these experiences in the Amazon. I can remember two clear ceremonies where I was continually being told the Ayahuasca brew is contaminated by greed. It is never la pura medicina. This other recurring vision that was very mysterious is starting to come back to me now as I engage the teachings. It revolves around using people to spread your message and co-opting another’s talents to do just this. It was presented as metaphor, and I see it clearly now. I see how the temptation was always to use those who championed a place, or the medicine were used to attract more people onto the plant medicine path. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that is a bad thing. What is shady is using another’s goodwill and service for your monetary advantage and then discarding them once it’s no longer to your advantage. This was all laid out for me and what do you know? It all played out in this regard. The good part is I can separate the plant medicine from the establishment, so instead of denouncing the supposed troubling aspects of them, I can instead just shake my head once again at human beings.

Because of looking back and seeing the profundity of these early visions, I first need to re-read my notes and afterwards I want to question the axiom about psychedelics and set and setting. As I have mentioned before, I eventually get around to challenging all prejudices. My thinking is that having the “proper" set and setting will help push your experience towards love, light, and bliss. However, using this approach you miss out on the other half of the teachings and to me the compelling part of the drama. It is important to engage all the drama of darkness and the light. I’m suggesting a wide variety of different set and settings and with experience experimenting with different scenarios. For instance, if I want to plumb the depths of my shadow it would seem a quiet and dark place, illuminated by perhaps a candle would work best. Instead of a mindset of unity, love, and light, I would gravitate more towards liberation, separation, and even conflict prior to the ceremony. It’s something to further think about.

This also brings up a funny contradiction concerning this path I walk. If you stay around long enough and hear the chatter you will be witness to these terms thrown about such as unity and liberation. However, if you think about it these two ideals are fundamentally opposed. Liberation is breaking free of an attempt to homogenize you into culture. Liberation allows for reclamation of your true self however fraught with difficulty that idea may be. Culture is in essence trying to unify a group of people. The unity spoken of in plant medicine, well, essentially spiritual circles, involves all of humanity breaking free of divisive tribal groups and coming together as a species. It’s an admirable utopian goal and to me it’s a pipe dream. I think I’m far enough down this path to realize it will never happen and in fact I don’t want it to happen. Incarnation is compelling because of the drama. Utopia is devoid of drama and suffering; it’s akin to spending your reward in heaven floating on a cloud and playing a harp. Forever. Who wants that? In addition, my own growth has accelerated the most during times of crisis and suffering. A little acrimony and separation are good for the soul.

I do sense my shadow has control over external events in order to guide me on the road to who knows where. I trust in him now after many years of conflict. The continuing upset of familiarity along the path causes a bit of consternation. It always takes a few days before I circle back towards knowing that my shadow is behind this fork in the road. To sum up, if I want transformation then entering a set and setting that is comfortable might need a little shake up. If anything, it will allow me to sell the pair of rose coloured glasses I own, and Mother Ayahuasca will not have to address my delusions within ceremony no more. I’m not sure what the next step involves but the plot has indeed thickened, and the apple cart has been upset. I stand back from it and smile. It’s all good. He will shine the light towards the direction to take just like he shone that light to get me to this stage of my development.

methodology

The sub-culture of psychedelic users is a fascinating study. I’m not of the joining type so I don’t seek out fellow explorers or join clubs and I tend to keep the community at arm’s length. I prefer to go it alone and keep the outside influences to a minimum. This is my predicament and I’m not championing it above what is calling out to another. However, I do have to remain true to myself.

One of the constants in the use of mind-altering substances is the importance of set and setting. Set is the condition of the one who is going to undergo the experience and setting is where the alteration of consciousness will take place. The set-up is to ensure your papers are in order so that you will have a good trip. We all want rainbows and unicorns. The bad trip into the darkness where you scare yourself silly and have to run from the Devil is somewhat mitigated.

Ever wonder why there is the continual threat of the bad trip? Could it be that the alteration of consciousness is trying to tell you something? Instead of following the rabbit into the labyrinth of the hidden darkness, we develop strategies that lead us towards the bright light of the higher self; a light so blinding we don’t have to deal with our darkness.

In my experience, that is precisely the reason we focus on set and setting. We are intrigued with inner exploration yet we don’t want to deal with all of it, just the good parts. I remember being so thoroughly beaten up as I counted in my first twelve Ayahuasca journeys that three of them were positive and uplifting and the other nine started out within a deep darkness that the majority of the time remained for the whole night. I was tempted many times to give up the exploration of consciousness through psychedelics because going into this darkness was so difficult and upsetting. I wanted smiles and sunshine and to hang out with the fully realized beings who could teach me to be enlightened just like them and instead I was being continually pummelled.

Would I trade the way this all came about if I could? No. It has been perfect. It’s what I wanted in the deep recesses of my soul. Would I want to go through this fire again? Hell, no! My current incarnation seems similar to the process of consciousness exploration that is unfolding.

So, what I’m questioning is the conventional wisdom in regards to when and where you can alter your consciousness. Obviously, a safe place is a must however I’d be interested in cataloguing the effects of certain environments upon the trip. It is a curious happenstance that I have met beings made of love and light who were basically housed in an old warehouse containing a freight elevator, rusted out plumbing, and the sound of dripping water. This also seems like a good place to have an experience with friends.

Psychedelics help you shed identity and reveal your true nature, if you let them. You have to let go of attachments and prejudices to get to the root of self. It becomes clear who you think you are is a cultural latex wrap enveloping something so much greater.

Psychedelics are just one way to the truth. A method is a method. You find what works for you. Meditation. Psychedelics. Darkness retreats. Religion. Extreme exertion. Breath work. Drumming/Trance. The method gets you in. In combination with the method is figuring out why you think you need a method along with understanding just what you are seeking.

My method is psychedelics because they put me face to face with the mystery. The peculiar thing about their use is I don’t get the answers I’m searching for while using them. Psychedelics give me knowledge but usually I don’t understand it. Over the following few months is when I am gifted understanding of what I experienced in combination with a profound remembering.

The understanding comes to me while not on the drug. The intensive experience gives me enough homework for at least six months though I’m constantly referencing experiences from years ago. I did two mushroom trips last December and now a few months later I’m starting to unravel the bequeathed knowledge. I had my initial takeaways from the trip but as I further examined them and prejudices fell away, I got to their core. I see clearly now what they were teaching me and once I gave up my attachment to who I wanted to be, everything fell into place. I started to see cracks in my narrative a few weeks back and then all of a sudden, the dam burst and I got it. It’s a fascinating process.

And that’s why I would suggest you find a method that works for you. A meditator meditates daily and gradually works their way into the inner sanctum. I take drugs and head straight for the buffet however I only gorge myself once or twice over a six-month period. The rest of the time I’m fasting. I do practice my own form of meditation however it’s not the western style. My meditation consists of daily hikes in the forest along with a nightly ritual at my Mesa after communing with sacred tobacco. This puts me in the space we are seeking.

When I first tried psychedelic drugs they scared me. They also made me very curious. Once I got past the fear, I wanted to do them a lot. I didn’t because my drug of choice was fortuitously a long way away; so, instead, I travelled once a year to the Amazon jungle to do them. This worked out in my favour so I didn’t become one who piles ceremony upon ceremony without ever integrating the experiences because if I had access to them I would have followed the love of ceremony trajectory. Now that I’m experienced with these tools I find I want to do them less and less. I still find them fascinating and a wellspring to explore. I have access to magic mushrooms and could do them every weekend if I wanted however I don’t feel that pull. A couple times a year seems about right.

spiritual mountains

In ancient Egyptian mythology the mummified Osiris is representing time as eternal duration called djet, essentially no time. The void. Our minds think of this as a dark and desolate existence due to the use of the english word void. It would be better described as a unity. Osiris is the creative masculine power that quickens the feminine darkness from which light comes forth and this illumination is the first cause of separation. The life force of Osiris was then snuffed out by his created opposite; his brother Set who was intent on claiming kingship over creation. Osiris' wife Isis magically restores his virility, allowing Osiris to impregnate her.

Osiris magically restored from temple of Seti I at Abydos

From this union is produced a son, Horus.

Isis nursing Horus from ROM Toronto, Canada

Set harasses Isis and chases her throughout the land to try and kill Horus. Isis eventually settles in the northern delta region and hides in the marshes away from Set and receives help from the Great Goddess Hathor to keep Horus hidden. Horus grows up to avenge his father's death against his uncle Set. Osiris is now a lower world figure because of his assassination. He is a flicker of light present in the darkness. Horus is a middle world figure who has to come of age to play the hero, defeat the villain, and climb the mountain. This is his journey, and his journey alone, which is demonstrated in his beheading of his mother Isis in a fit of rage after she interfered in his battles with Set. Horus receives healing help from Hathor during the arduous climb after Set accosts and blinds him. The blinding of Horus is a metaphor for being so focused on the climb up the hill you forget what got you to this place to begin with. Successfully climbing the mountain means he has defeated his enemies, reclaimed Kingship as well as the white crown called the Hedjet, and he gets the girl. The girl is the Great Goddess Hathor.

The race up the mountain between Horus and Set to be the most high is a metaphor for the contendings of the two halves of the mind for dominance and a quest for the masculine idea of enlightenment, depicted in ancient Egypt as the white crown of Osiris.

Osiris' Hedjet white crown 

Esoterically, this denotes the Kingship of self; exoterically, the myth conveyed a battle for the Kingship of Egypt, and ultimately the winner becomes a ruler ready to lead others on in their journey up the mountain. There's a chance, as you are about to summit, that you will discover the mind's desire to become enlightened is an egoistic construct. There's also a good chance you won't discover this. The pinnacle of spiritual attainment will be reached.

I am aware of a couple things in regards to the answer I am seeking. The most important is Love. Love will be the key that unlocks all. The route on my journey involving Love goes through the Goddess and there is no avoiding this. It presents to the seeker the fount of universal power, a chaotic and wild power that will be your doom. I think many have tried and all were routed because they approached the power with less than pure intentions. So, eventually this path was buried and forgotten and in its place the masculine ego continued seeking and developed hyper-masculine methods of completing the hero's journey, thinking they could get in the back door and access this power.

Attributes of masculine spiritual paths include asceticism, subjugation of the feminine, cultivating a state of no desire, a disengagement from the world, righteousness, and rewards. There is a masculine spiritual problem that manifests as misogyny. Why is it a subconscious problem within the masculine mind? I think it has to do with the hero's journey. We are on this innate quest and at every turn the feminine presence has the potential to derail it. Passion, pleasure, marriage, family, and sirens all take us away from completing the journey, so then we live out our life feeling trapped, pass away, and return for another go around on the wheel of incarnation. Men feel women want to ensnare but again I don’t think they do it consciously when they enchant, hypnotize, and make you forget why you are here. The conundrum is that in order to complete the hero's journey you have to go through the feminine and you have to master the power that comes from her. I have the knowledge I need to complete the hero’s journey and it involves taking this power and moving it into the heart and radiating it out from that centre. The only problem is that power first manifests in the genitals. Power manifesting sexually is so strong and there is this desire for it to be satiated. Then you follow that path and it traps you once again because of all the consequences involved in the careless use of this power. Has anyone ever got past this point? But maybe the problem is with the hero’s journey and it is necessary? Is it just a fool's errand?

Mysterious power I can name but to its essence I remain in shadow. If you wish to worship something this would be it however She asks no worship. She shows you Love and what you do with this knowledge is your freedom of choice. To become fully realized is to raise your vibration and become light. The masculine within is forever striving to move forward in the journey and reach its destiny. As we separate from the mother of all, we acquire self-awareness and along with this the lack of knowledge of who we are leads us into delusion. The delusion, which is a result of ignorance, manifests in the belief that the character we are playing is a separate entity, alone in the universe. The masculine within loses itself on the climb to the top of the mountain and to reach the top of the mountain becomes a much more arduous climb than imagined. The climb is difficult to begin with without the added obstacle of dealing with questions of identity. The ascent becomes sidetracked with the steadfast belief in self and the subsequent need to aggrandize self or wallow in self-pity. The climb can only continue once there is a reconciliation with the sacred feminine.

From an overall perspective, the journey from dark to light is far from a magical trip following the yellow brick road. First of all, there's a dragon that accompanies the seeker on this journey up the mountain. Freed from the chains that bind him to the darkness, the dragon has his own agenda once granted freedom. As what I will call the "higher self" becomes self-aware in this world, the dragon doubles down on this awareness and causes the higher self to think he is a separate being, alone in the universe. The higher self buys into this and is manipulated by this construct of ego layered onto self via the dragon. Many are lost in a world of self-aggrandizement or self-pity oblivious to their true origins and the journey stalls without the intuitive knowledge that there is something more. Some seekers are content with allowing others to be their guide and succumb to the temptation of a belief in someone else's beliefs. Getting past these hurdles and forging on into the unknown will lead to a direct encounter with the dragon and without sufficient courage you will run from this harrowing experience. This flight from the beast can either lead you into the trap he has prepared for you or you will end the journey once and for all and return to your unfulfilled life. If perchance you can muster the courage, throw off the fear, get off the mat, and continue on you will be rewarded. The worst is over; the dragon will continue his attacks but you will grow stronger and eventually subdue this bastard. Help is available for you. Just look for it and ask for it. Then get up that mountain!

At the top of the mountain I will become one with my heart. I carry her now; she is but a child entrusted into my care. I am like a clueless father tasked with raising a daughter I know nothing about. This is the part of the journey I must accomplish on my own in order to transform my heart and soul into one.

So you reach the the top and what is waiting for you? You are enlightened! You are now the most high! What an accomplishment? Another great egoistic achievement. Another lesson. I’m going to climb down the mountain now and just go back to Love. My Goddess awaits my return. I will meet her halfway once again in the middle world, rule over my world, and return to her world at physical death.

two-faced mind games

The two portals of the horizon from which the sun comes forth and exits represents duality, specifically the bipolar nature of the intellectual mind. The mind can be thought of as the brilliance of the sun. The spark of intelligence within conscious humankind contrasted with the controlling hidden darkness to which we are loathe to admit. These two elements are forever contending. The ancient Egyptians called them brothers: Horus and Set and from this warring a popular piece of literature from the dynastic period of Egypt is called "The Contendings of Horus and Set" which I have written previously about in this blog post. The name for this horizon god is Harakhty, which has been translated as "Horus of the horizon" which is incomplete in my view.

Re-Harakhty at Ramesses II Temple at Abu Sibel

The proper translation in my opinion should be "the two faces of the double horizon." The hr is referring to a face, the akh(e)t to the horizon, and the y makes it plural.

ḥr - the ancient Egyptian Face hieroglyph

Gardiner sign listed no. D2

Rémih via CC BY-SA 3.0

The iconography of Harakhty presents as a falcon, this divine predatory avian symbol representing at times not only Horus but instructively for the purposes of this essay also Set as shown here at the desert Temple of Hibis in the Kharga oasis.

The renegade Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's god, called by Egyptologists Aten, was early in its iconography at his desert outpost Akhetaten, referred to in the textbooks as Amarna, given the standard of the falcon and referred to as Re-Harakhty. The solar aspect of Re is recognizing the role of the light of the sun being inherent in the divine mind within the human race. The strength and path of the sun encapsulates all these principles in the ubiquitous luminescent orb and was collectively referred to as Aten. This long and detailed blog post delves into this most interesting topic. 

Akhenaten offering to Aten

Jean-Pierre Dalbéra via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

In Greek mythology the divine part of the mind is the god Apollo. His counterpart is the shadowy dragon Typhon, whom by this exploration into the myth is representing the lower self. Apollo slays this dragon at Delphi which enables the fabled oracle at Delphi.

Delphi

It's interesting to speculate on this myth. Does the freeing of the mind from darkness allow for the feminine intuition and ability to "see" into the future to be tapped into? Or, alternatively, is it the lower self that is the oracle?

The great light of the sun coming forth by day is the intellect, the divine mind called nous in Greek. At its zenith, this ball of luminous light reaches up high into the northern sky. It enlightens the symbolic representations of the world axis such as the tree of life and the omphalos or world navel that connects us to the great mother. After the setting of the sun when the darkness takes over is the rise of the Pythian dragon Typhon; the brother of the divine mind that in our dualistic world becomes the adversary. This coiled basilisk serpent wraps itself around the world tree, the great mother, and reaches up into the pinnacle of the heavens demanding worship as the most high as it manifests in the northern circumpolar constellation of the dragon, Draco.

Twisted Draco

Taking the axiom "As Above, So Below" and giving it a spin, we can extrapolate "What's Outside is Within" and in order for this inward perspective to come into the light, the internal dragon must be slain. In order to understand the dragon in turn we must take our leave of light. We recreate these events daily. The sun is the most high in the day and Draco is the most high at night. They are the two faces.

revisiting akhetaten

I've been intrigued by the events of what is called the Amarna period by Egyptologists, like most others who have taken an interest in ancient Egypt, though over the course of four plus years of writing in this blog space I haven't commented all that often on its principle characters or its theology. There are plenty of places on the web that give an overview of the upheaval caused by Akhenaten in the desert outpost he commissioned, which was called Akhetaten (Egyptologists refer to it as Amarna from its Arabic name). Instead, I'd rather just make some observations based on my interpretations of the nature of Atenism and the systemic eschewing of the more traditional gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt in favour of the worship of Akhenaten's god, Aten.

Akhenaten offering to Aten

Before we go further I think we should get something straight. Akhenaten never referred to a god named just Aten but instead had a long titular name for his god so Aten is a short form that we use. The Aten is the disk of the sun; the god as worshipped is the activeness of what is encompassing and emanating from that disk and the Aten was perceived as the life giving force of light, this characteristic of the light being equivalent to the concept of the Ka in ancient Egyptian thought. A boundary stele in Akhetaten describes the Aten as 'the living Re-Harakhty rejoicing in what is Right, in his name as Shu which is in the sun-disk.' 

Boundary stele at Amarna

Kurohito via CC-BY-SA-3.0

Jan Assmann points out, however, that the association of the god with the word "Aten" is erroneous for two reasons. In Egyptian usage, if the deity is referred to as jtn or Aten, it is only in names, such as Akhenaten, Baketaten, and Ankhesenpaaten.
Remembering Osiris, Tom Hare, page 196.

Akhenaten describes himself in the boundary stele as being 'of Re, the living Horus. Dual King, Lord of the two lands. Neferkheperure sole one of Re. Given life for ever and eternity.'

After earlier, tentative attempts to provide the sun disk with hands, the perfected, brilliant simple image of the radiant Aten was developed in a single, bold step. But the decided, plastic bulge the disk often displays should not lead us to interpret it as a solar orb. The Aten was actually not the sun disk, but rather the light that is in the sun and which, radiating from it, calls the world to life and keeps it alive. Heinrich Brugsch already emphasized that Aten was a god of light, and Jan Assmann has managed a fresh distillation of this view. Indeed, from early times, the sun with its rays had served in the writing system as a hieroglyph in writing words meaning "to shine" and the like. In contrast to the rich mythic frameworks in which Egyptian deities had otherwise been embedded, the Aten remained free of such connections and constellations. In fact, it was said of him only that he ever and again creates the world and maintains it in life; but there was no longer an interest in the creation of the world-Aten, "who built himself with his own hands," creates the world continually.
Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, Erik Hornung Translated by David Lorton, pages 54-55.

Here's an explanation of what Akhenaten was trying to convey as the nature of his god:

Precursors also exist in the writing system: the pictorial concept of the radiant Aten is clearly derived from a hieroglyph that means "light" (though not "sun"). To judge from the iconography, the god of Amarna religion was conceived of not just as a sun god, but also as the god of light. It might have been thought that this "personal union" was obvious and lay in the nature of things. This is perhaps physically but not historically correct. Like many people who have lived close to nature, the Egyptians did not originally make a casual connection between daylight and the light of the sun. In the Coffin Texts, it is Shu, god of the air, who "makes it light after the darkness." The word shu originally meant "light filled air," and although it served as a divine name designating the god of air, its meaning as a lexeme changed in favor of "light." Evidently hidden behind Amarna religion was a physical concept that perceived the connection between daylight and the sun while retaining the connection between light and air. The god of this religion was the sun, which filled and penetrated the earth in the form of air replete with light.
This representation is always accompanied by an explanatory caption-the lengthy name of the new god, which on the analogy of the royal titulary was written in two cartouches:

(Re-Harakhty, who rejoices in Light-land)|
(in his name Light, which is in the sun)|.

This formulation, which still contained the divine name Re-Harakhty and that of the air god Shu, which was homonymous with the word for "light," was later changed to

(Ruler of the horizon, who rejoices in Light-land)|
(in his name as Light which comes from the sun)|.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Assmann, translated by David Lorton, page 210.

As well, Akhenaten seemed to have some sort of plan that involved a gradual introduction of his god that escalated into a recognition that within the Aten was encapsulated the origin of all and this origin contained within it both feminine and masculine natures:

This androgyny is highlighted in the following lines from the Shorter Hymn to the Aten:

People, herds and flocks,
All trees that grow on earth,
They live when you dawn for them,
You are Mother and Father
For those whom you have made.
Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, page 164.

What about this androgyny? When shining and releasing its beneficence during the day, the disk is providing life. Its nature is nurturing and motherly. It is light and sustenance. Similarly in Egypt, Akhenaten takes on the role of androgyny as he appears with distended belly and pendulous breasts in his guise as the Nile river god Hapi.

Androgynous Akhenaten

In the nature of the relationship between the Aten and Akhenaten we see all the elements that make up the essence of the primeval beginnings of the Ogdoad which encompasses within it the four pairs of the building blocks of creation. There is the cosmic light that manifests, the role of Amun and Amaunet, that appears as a byproduct of the Aten's daily cycle. Separation and division enacted by time as represented by Heh and Hauhet is referenced with the inclusion of the god Shu in the titular descriptions. These two essential elements are provided by the Aten in its daytime manifestation. The absence of the disk at night leads to the condition of darkness and chaos which echoes the roles of Kek and Kaukhet in the Ogdoad. The roles of the water based Nun and Naunet as the providers and nurturers of life are taken up by the Pharaoh Akhenaten who provides this to his people on earth when the Aten transforms itself on the western horizon. 

Akhenaten is constantly designated the Nile of Egypt, embodying the annual inundation and all the beneficence of nature, and he is called "mother who bears all, he nourishes millions with his food," just as prior to Akhenaten, in the hymn of Suti and Hor, the sun god Re was designated "mother of humans and deities," while he would later often be called "mother and father."
Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, Erik Hornung Translated by David Lorton, pages 56-57.

The High Priest of the Aten at Akhetaten, Panehesy, in his hymn to Akhenaten reveres him as a god, the one who granted him life, and also as the provider of his sustenance.

Praise to you, oh my god, who built me,
who determined good for me,
who made me come into being and gave me bread,
who cared for me with his ka!

I give praise to the height of the heavens,
I adore the lord of the Two Lands, Akhenaten:
god of fate, giver of life, lord of command,
light of every land,
on whose gaze one lives.
Nile of humankind,
on whose ka one is sated.
God who creates the great ones and builds the poor ones,
breath for every nose, by which one breathes!

Worship of Akhenaten in tomb of Panehesy

kairoinfo4u via CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Aten (or Re-Harakhty) was the god of Akhenaten, but the personal god of the individual was the king-as Assmann has put it, "He was the god who set out on procession, who performed signs and wonders, and who intervened in the destiny of the individual, holding life and death in his hands."
Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, Erik Hornung, translated by David Lorton, page 55.

Actually Akhenaten is credited with much more in this hymn and with this praise we can start formulating the idea that Akhenaten considered himself (and Nefertiti) as not only the representatives of the Aten's will on earth but they also considered themselves divine; they were the dualistic incarnation of the god.

Akhenaten's writings portrayed the Aten as a creator god and identified the king with it. Like the Aten, Akhenaten was a creator god. Like the Aten, Akhenaten was re-born every day, thereby becoming part of the cosmos. But Akhenaten alone was accessible both to the individual on earth and to the god in the heavens; and this system, which must have seemed logical to the king, was the correct order of the universe. It was ma`at.
Divinity and Deities in Ancient Egypt, David P. Silverman, edited by Byron E. Shafer, page 86.

In the formulation of Akhenaten's new understanding of the divine, historians see within it the first fruits of a philosophy that gravitated towards monotheism. The program of Akhenaten's, upon taking power, was not an immediate introduction of monotheism but seemed like a methodical march towards it.

Akhenaten did not drop all links with other deities. Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Thoth, Ptah and Hathor were still prominent gods in Akhenaten's religion. During the reign of Akhenaten when many of the old gods were rejected, Tefnut and Shu remained in favour and Akhenaten and Nefertiti were often depicted as the twin lion gods. This suggests that Atenism was not in fact a monotheistic religion, but a henotheistic solar religion.
There are no known temples to Shu, but despite Akhenaten's distaste for the gods of Egypt, he and Nefertiti used Tefnut and Shu for political purposes. They depicted themselves as the twin gods in an apparent attempt to elevate their status to that of being a living god and goddess, the son and daughter of the creator, on earth. 
Akhenaten seems not to have persecuted the cults of other deities as severely as he did Amen's. For example, a stella of Thutmose III from Buto featuring the goddess Wadjet was not desecrated. It is not entirely clear if the earlier version of the relief stems from the pre-Amarna original or from a secondary restoration.
The Monuments of Seti I, Peter James Brand, page 52.

Akhenaten had himself and his wife depicted as incarnations of Shu and Tefenet who were the results of the separation of the androgyne Atum into male and female constituent parts. Scholars say it was for political purposes in order to depict themselves as gods - children of the sun you could say.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti as Shu and Tefenet signet ring

https://egyptianaemporium.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/museum-piece-5-mma-26-7-767/

Perhaps more striking evidence of deities integrated into Aten-worship were the god Shu and goddess Tefnut, with whom the king and queen were identified. Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture, were twins, the original divine pair of creation. They formed the space between sky and earth. Shu and Tefnut were also believed to welcome the newly risen sun. Although not exactly personified abstractions like Ma'at and Hapi, Shu and Tefnut are in some ways not strongly differentiated from Re: one of Tefnut's forms, for instance, is as the eye of Re. At any rate, the intermediary quality of Shu and Tefnut, between earth and heaven, and their role as worshippers of the rising sun, made them perfect divine figures for Akhenaten and Nefertiti to identify with. With the Aten, Akhenaten-Shu and Nefertiti-Tefnut perhaps act as a replacement for the traditional family triads of gods who were worshipped in Egyptian temples. In the tomb of Ipy (number 10) at Amarna, Akhenaten and Nefertiti are shown offering to the Aten small boxes containing scented oils. These boxes are shaped like the earlier form of the Aten's cult name and adorned with statuettes of Shu and Tefnut; they take up the middle of the composition, reflecting the way both the gods and the royal couple occupy the medial space between heaven and earth. Shu, of course, was honoured in the formal name of the Aten.
Akhenaten, Dominic Montserrat, pages 37-38.

What's interesting about this is that in Akhenaten's titular descriptions of his god he says that Aten is Shu in his sun disk. If he makes himself the manifestation of Shu here on earth, in essence the living image of Shu, theologically I would speculate then that the Aten is androgynous and the image of the Aten into the created world reflects back male and female divisions which Akhenaten stylized as himself and his wife Nefertiti. The titi part of Nefertiti means has come, image, form and nefer means beautiful. The beauty of the Aten becomes resplendent in Nefertiti.

Nefertiti

Now I can take this a step further to add further confirmation to what I'm positing here. The heir to the throne, whether a child of these two or not is unclear, was the famous boy king Tutankhamun however King Tut was named at birth Tutankhaten before changing his name and allowing the worship of Amun to resume when the whole Amarna scheme came apart rather quickly.

Pharaoh Tutankhamun

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/50.6

Okay so let's deconstruct Tutankhaten. Tut is similar to titi and comes from the ancient Egyptian word for image which is twt. Ankh has the meaning of life and in this instance means living as in the 'living image of Aten' in other words as I have demonstrated in the case of Akhenaten, Tutankhaten would be another incarnation of Shu as he was the heir to the throne. Why is this so? Because in the world of time and separation we live in we see duality not wholeness so the reflection of the Aten to us is of a dualistic nature. Shu in his disk would then mean an undivided wholeness with Tefenet. When Shu leaves the disk upon the rising of the Aten, then reflected back into creation is Akhenaten and Nefertiti as Shu and Tefenet.

This can further be explained by Akhenaten's use of the cartouche to enclose the titular name of the Aten. This is the only time in the history of Egypt that the cartouche was used for the gods as it was usually reserved only for the pharaoh. I have demonstrated though that through the iconography of Shu and Tefenet as representing Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Akhenaten considered their coupling as being the dualistic image of the Aten here in Egypt. Therefore it would not be a stretch to then put the name of the god in the cartouche since the Aten and the divine royal couple are one in the same in this theology. Also there is the 'Window of Appearance' at their palace in Akhetaten of Akhenaten and Nefertiti which is like an enactment of the daily rising of the sun which lends credence to the idea of these two being the sum of the Aten as manifested here in the physical plane. The Aten rises and reflects back these two who then appear at the window to the people.

Window of Appearance at the palace

As he became more established in his kingship, Akhenaten further developed or revealed a deeper understanding of his god and started removing comparisons to the old gods of Egypt as well as discontinuing the use of animals in the titular descriptions of the Aten. Eventually, in about the ninth year of his reign, the names of Re-Horakhty and Shu disappear from the titular descriptions and the Aten becomes 'the Living One, Sun, Ruler of the Horizon, who rejoices on the horizon in his name, which is Sunlight, which comes from the disk.'

Before continuing we should address the repeated claim of Akhenaten being the world's first monotheist. That honour really belongs to the god Set.

Set receiving adortion

His murder of Osiris and attempted murder of Horus were attempts at becoming the sole god - an interesting way for sure to establish himself as the one god. He also threatens to kill off the company of gods in 'The Contendings of Horus and Set' if he didn't get his way.

Said Horus, son of Isis: "It is no good, this cheating me in the presence of the Ennead and depriving me of the office of my father Osiris."
Thereupon Isis became furious at the Ennead and took an oath by (the) god in the presence of the Ennead as follows: "By my mother Neith, the goddess, and by Ptah-Tatenen, with lofty plumes, who curbs the horns of gods, these matters should be submitted before Atum, the great prince who is in Heliopolis, and also (before) Khepri, who resides in his bark."
And the Ennead said to her: "Don't become angry. The rights will be given to the one who is in the right. All that you have said will be done."
Seth, the son of Nut, became furious at the Ennead when they had said these words to Isis the Great, the God's Mother. So Seth said to them: "I shall take my scepter of 4,500 nemset-weight and kill one of you a day."

Though the attempts of Set to establish himself in ancient Egypt as the supreme god with the intent afterwards to then kill off all the rest of them fail, I believe this malfeasance moved on, still continues unabated, and is the legacy of the monotheism that is practiced today. Mythologically the story is one that takes place as an event just one time; however the myth of Horus and Set is meant to be interpreted as something that can be projected on to your individual life and society/civilization as a whole. In other words, the concept of Set is forever trying to kill your soul and get you to worship only him in his guise as destructive or hypnotic ideals such as power and wealth in addition to seducing those already enraptured with the notion of one god. So it is my belief that the tendency and push towards monotheism should be an occurring phenomenon of human development based on an archetype of a power bent on domination and control. This power is tricky and a master of disguise and transformation. I know that's a very provocative position to take and you are free to read between the lines on what I mean by that statement. I'll return to the topic of Set and monotheism further on in this study but before I do I want to delve a little deeper into our understanding of Akhenaten and the Aten.

The Aten according to what Akhenaten has written about is dualistic in nature as a mother and father and looking closely at this we can also see this dualism in the descriptions of the Aten as being Re-Horakhty who rejoices in light land. This is not telling us about an amalgamation of the gods Re and Horus but rather it is pointing to the power inherent in the twin horizons of power (light land) where the sun disk enters into the underworld in the West and exits in the East. It is describing the power of transformation possible at these magical portals in the sky called by the ancient Egyptians akhet. Akhenaten built his city with these two akhets in mind and symbolically the place the Aten goes when it sets and rests would be Akhetaten.

Amarna aka Akhetaten

The pyramid does not stand for anything visible, it makes something visible. Its elevation makes it a pointer to the heavens. This element of the pyramid's symbolism can be substantiated with three different arguments. The first argument concerns the linguistic form in which the Egyptians referred to the pyramids. What I have in mind here is not the Egyptian word for pyramid, mr, which is etymologically uncertain, but metaphorical designations. The central concept here is akhet, a word we traditionally translate as "horizon" but that in Egyptian refers to a region of the heavens where the sky nears the earth and the sun god ascends from the underworld in the morning and returns in the evening. In Egyptian the pyramid of Cheops (whose Egyptian name was Khufu) is called akhet of Khufu. Akhet is the threshold region between the sky, the earth, and the underworld; in particular, akhet is the place where the sun rises. The etymological root of the word has the meaning of "blaze, be radiant"; likewise, the hieroglyph for akhet has nothing in common with the pyramid, but is a pictogram of the sun rising or setting between two mountains. The pyramid does not represent such an akhet, but symbolizes it in an anionic way. The term of comparison between akhet and pyramid is the idea of "ascent to heaven." As the sun god ascends from the underworld to the akhet and appears in the sky, so the king interred in the pyramid ascends to heaven by way of his akhet, his threshold of light.
The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, Jan Assmann, page 58.

The hymn to the Aten composed by Akhenaten consists of first describing the beneficent qualities of the Aten in the rising, a mother father entity and then the second stanza talks of death and thieves upon the disappearance of the Aten. As the all powerful one it must be that the Aten is responsible for both conditions so encapsulated within this power of the Aten is the dualistic notion of life giving and life taking. It's consistent with the persona of Re in that Re provides life as the supreme Ka power of our world but also can take it away his with searing destructive heat. Another description of the Aten to be taken note of is the expression of 'Shu in his disk', not Shu out of his disk. When the Aten has set then Shu is in the disk and that becomes very destructive with the death state becoming predominant and the thieves of the night given free reign; when the Aten is rising and Shu leaves the disk, dispels the darkness, and provides for all, then everything is good. In traditional ancient Egyptian myth concerning the setting of the sun the disk is essentially the sun boat. At night it is attacked by the forces of entropy trying to moor it ashore. The boat, the disk, enlists the help of Set to ward off the entropic serpent Apophis. This drama disappears during this Amarna period though there is still the division between the Aten of the day and the Aten of the night.

Now let's examine the role of the sun disk in generating cyclical time and how we see that in the name and worship of the Aten.

In the tradition of the theological discourse, Akhenaten's god represents the idea of the "god of life" in its purest form of expression. In this regard, he most clearly resembles the god Shu in the Middle Kingdom theological concept treated in chapter 8.5, in which the air god Shu is explained as "life" and as "plentitude of time." These are two central concepts of Aten theology. When he is not called by his lengthy theological name, he is regularly styled "the living sun," and the word neheh, "plentitude of time," is used as if it were another personal name of the god.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Assmann, translated by David Lorton, page 213.

The celestial underpinnings of the god of plenitude of time, neheh, does not necessarily contain the light. An adjunct to the process of separation as enacted by the introduction of time and motion involves the manifestation of light into the space that has been created. It then begs the question - who is Re? He is surely not the sun disk as has been demonstrated but rather he is something more nuanced. It can be argued that at the core of his nature Re is the cycle, the pathway, that creates the illusion of time. To make the pronouncement that light is the domain of the time god as Akhenaten promulgated then this to me necessarily introduces a theological crisis. Amun was celebrated as the light, the cosmic light hidden away since the beginning of time but due to the evolution of the creation of the universe was able to manifest in many forms. One of the ways he did this was through the sun disk and the cycles of time created by Re. The ancient Egyptians then combined the two as Amun-Re which is Amun manifesting his light. It is because of this that when Akhenaten attempted to introduce the worship of his god of light he needed and attempted to erase and destroy the existence of Amun. Akhenaten then has to create a place called "Light-land", i.e. Akhetaten, to justify this lofty theological conundrum.

"Who rejoices in Light-land" refers to the cultic-local dimension, to the idea of the earthly residence of the divine. Light-land is normally the celestial, cosmic locale of the deity, but here, it also refers to the city of Amarna, whose ancient Egyptian name was "Light-land of Aten (i.e., the sun)." "In his name as Light..." refers to the verbal dimension of divine presence. What is meant is that the god has Light as his name, not in the sense that he is called light, but in the sense that light embraces all that can be said about this god. His essence is manifest in light, not in myths and genealogies. With that, the three dimensions of divine presence are reduced to the single dimension of the cosmic. There is no divine presence other than light. For this reason, the temples consisted of open courts, and mythology and speculation were discarded in favor of a theology that exhausted itself in a theological interpretation of sunlight.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Assmann, translated by David Lorton, page 211.

The Aten is Shu in his sun disk and at its core then this god is a Heh god; a primeval Ogdoadic god that causes separation and this division allows creation to take place.

The god Heh

Aten is inextricably linked with time and time is the master of transformation. To put it in ancient Egyptian terms, it is the idea of becoming and that is represented by the scarab Khepri. There is great magic and transformation occurring at the two horizon points as the duality of the light and dark is in this balance and the withdrawal of the light into darkness changes the nature of the god and vice versa. In this transformation in the west Re becomes inactive. Akhetaten is then the place of transformation; it's the place where Akhenaten comes into contact with his god and this is at night; it's when Shu is in the sun disk. Shu in the sun disk is the physical absence of light and air, thus no separation. Air as an agent of separation is linked with the light that fills up the divide. In this theology, time ceases at nightfall because the disk has gone away and mankind goes to sleep like he is in a death state. When Shu leaves the disk, time resumes, and everything comes alive. Akhenaten is saying cyclical time is creation; cyclical time is life. In ancient Egyptian terms the neheh is what Akhenaten considered the all and the death state in the absence of neheh is called djet, which is linear and stable time. Djet time is the time of Osiris, the so called god of the dead. Thinking about that now with all that we have learned it becomes too simplistic and convenient that Osiris is styled the god of the dead; it's almost pejorative. We can now see that Osiris was the god of the dreamtime, the subconscious visionary realms, the other, and the one you need to establish a relationship within in order to truly come forth and transform yourself. In Akhenaten's world there was no need for this and the time of Osiris, who is basically the soul, was declared null and void. The Pharaoh became the manifestation of the creator god and bestowed life upon his subjects as he chose to and commanded worship for this act of perceived benevolence. You can even take the concept of neheh and djet further by examining the idea of djet and stability. This in essence is referring to the pillar, especially the cult object of the djed pillar used in the worship of Osiris. To resurrect Osiris, the djed pillar must be raised, such as what occurs here at the temple of Seti I in Abydos.

Raising the died pillar

Knowing this we can now see that the expression in ancient Egypt of neheh time, which is the city of the pillar - Iunu/Heliopolis, is constructed upon a backbone of stable djet time. Neheh conceptually reveals itself as time that is unstable and not built to last! Quite fascinating right? Take a break... We'll leave this philosophical exercise with the idea that Shu and Set are the strongmen of neheh time; the ones holding this construct together. Its eventual dissolution is prophesied in the Book of the Dead spell 175 and everything will return once again to the eternal time of djet. The time god, the master of transformation, and his bag of magic tricks will eventually perform one last disappearing act!

So let's go back to how Akhenaten describes himself in the boundary stelae: 'of Re, the living Horus. Dual King, Lord of the two lands.  Neferkheperure sole one of Re. Given life for ever and eternity.' Neferkheperure 'means beautiful are the transformations of Re' and as we can now see it is the Aten who generates time that allow these transformations to take place.

In the Egyptian language, ḫpr "to become, to come into being, to develop" is the antonym of wnn, "to exist, to persist." Ḫpr is associated with the god Khepre, the morning sun, the principle of autogenetic energy. By contrast, wnn is associated with the god Wnn-nfr, "who exists in completion," Osiris, the god of the dead, the principle of unalterable duration. We are confronting here the famous dichotomy of nḥḥ and dt, time happening and time persisting, cyclical and linear time, "imperfective" and "perfective" time. It is quite consistent with the hymn's equation of the visible world with ḫprw that the god himself is called Nḥḥ in the Amarna texts. God is time (Nḥḥ), and everything unfolding, "developing" in time (ḫpr) is a transformation (ḫprw) of his essence or energy.
Moses the Egyptian: the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Jan Assmann pages 184-185.

Neheh time, once again, is cyclical and active time. The Aten is cyclical time, transforming and creating all the while. Without the active creation of time, there is nothing but inactiveness and death according to this theology. In the third song of Akhenaten's great hymn to the Aten we read of this very nature of the god.

(text of the great hymn)
Third Song: Transformations (Kheperu) - God, Nature, and the King
First Stanza: Light - Seeing and Knowing
(a) The Seasons
91 Your rays nurse all the fields,
92 When you shine, they live and grow for you.
93 You made the seasons to foster all that you made,
94 Winter, to cool them,
95 Summer, that they taste you.
(b) Kheperu in Heaven and on Earth
96 You made the sky far to shine therein,
97 To see all that you make, while you are One,
98 Risen in your form (kheperu) of the living sundisk,
99 Shining and radiant,
100 Far and near.

101 You make millions of forms (kheperu) from yourself alone,
102 Towns, villages, fields,
103 Road and river.
104 All eyes behold you upon them,
105 When you are above the earth as the disk of daytime.
Moses the Egyptian: the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Jan Assmann pages, 175-176.

In the worship of the Aten as promulgated by Akhenaten it is possible to pick up on a reactionary tendency as the whole set up places the emphasis on the pharaoh as the divine manifestation of the god. The original collapse of the traditional order in the dynastic history of ancient Egypt, called the First Immediate Period by scholars, set up a series of grassroots theological realizations that powered changes that eventually led to what could be called the democratization of beliefs and a personal piety whereby the commoner could have direct access to the worshipped god. It is possible to extrapolate from this a situation where no longer did the priests and royalty have a domineering control over the practice of worship and obedience in society and as a result the royal cult would have developed independent of the worshipping practices of the commoner. The more common worship of Amun was an awakening to the light within all of us and it swept through the whole land touching all inhabitants of ancient Egypt. This more than anything else propelled the profound changes in worship in that it revealed all humankind as divine instead of just the pharaoh. Thus the system of Aten worship was a return to the primacy of the pharaoh as the sole intermediator between the god and his subjects. The revolutionary idea in this worship though was the declaration of the Aten as the only god deserving of worship.

Amun is the light and if Akhenaten is claiming the Aten and himself are the light then Amun had to go. From my standpoint he was wrong. The Aten's historical underpinning comes from the primordial god of cyclical time Heh and to proclaim the light comes from Heh is incorrect. To accept that light comes from the manifestation of creation at Heliopolis is also a claim that cannot be fully substantiated. It is Amun coming forth from the sun disk that allows for the manifestation of visible light in this world hence the syncretic Amun-Re. Re by himself is properly the generator of neheh, cyclical time, as his boat sails round and round. Shu is the arch, the pillar of the city of the pillar - Heliopolis, Iunu in ancient Egypt, that separates the sky from the earth and allows for creation to flourish. 

Let's now take a look back into the void, into formlessness, and chase this one down the rabbit hole. A funerary stele of twin brothers from the time of Akhenaten's father Amenhotep III, Her and Suti (Horus and Set), make mention of the Aten in a hymn that was engraved onto the stele. 

But during the lifetime of these twin brothers, Her and Suti, the cult of Aten must have made considerable progress at Thebes, for, in spite of their loyalty to Amen, and to the old solar gods of the country, and to Osiris and Isis being manifest, they caused a Hymn to Aten to be engraved on their funerary stele. It has no title, and follows the Hymn to Amen immediately, beginning with the words, "Homage to thee, ATEN of the day!" He is called "creator of men and women, maker of their lives," and is identified with the "Great Hawk of many-coloured plumage." He performed the act of creation which "raised" himself up [out of the primeval watery abyss]. "The creator of himself he was not born." He is next identified with the "Aged Horus," the dweller in Nut, the oldest solar god or sky-god in Egypt, and is acclaimed joyfully at rising and setting. He created the earth (?). The next words, Khnem Amen Henmemit, are difficult. If the writer of the hymn meant to identify Aten with Khnem-Amen, a god of the region of the First Cataract, that is understandable, but how, then, is Henmemit, if that be the correct reading, to be fitted in?1 Aten is next called "Conqueror of the Two Lands from the greatest to the least." Another difficulty meets us in the words "glorious mother of gods and men," and the words that follow, "gracious artificer, most great, prospering in her work," seem to apply to this mother. Perhaps the writer of the hymn wished to compare Aten to such a mother, or he may have regarded Aten as father-mother. After another line containing obscure allusions we read, "How marvellous is production of him who raises up his beauty from the womb of Nut, and who illumines the Two Lands with his Aten (Disk)! He the Pautti (the primeval matter out of which the world and all in it were made) created himself. He is the LORD ONE. He made the Seasons out of the months, Summer because he loves heat, and Winter because he loves the cold; [during the former] he makes men's bodies to become exhausted. The apes sing hymns to him when he rises daily."... Judging by what is said in the Hymn to Aten, the origin, nature and attributes of Aten closely resemble those of Amen. Both gods are identified with the oldest gods in Egypt. Each is declared to be self-created and not to have been born, therefore not begotten, and to each is applied the epithet "ONE." It is interesting to note that Aten is identified with Pautti, the oldest of all the gods, and with the Aged Horus, or Horus the Elder. As Aten is said to be the maker of Summer and Winter and the months, it is clear that a tradition, probably going back to pre-dynastic times, associated him with the primitive Year-god. This Hymn shows that our two architects regarded Aten as a thoroughly Egyptian god, and as one who could be and ought to be worshipped side by side with Amen, who had condescended to become the begetter of their lord and master, Amenhetep III.
1 The true reading may be hememit and so be connected with the word to "roar" - Khnem-Amen of the roarings. Amenhetep IV dedicated a scarab to the god of roarings (British Museum, No. 51084).
Tutankhamen: Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian Monotheism/with Hieroglyphic Texts of Hymns to Amen and Aten, E. A. Wallis Budge, pages 32-34.

This tract identifies Aten with a year (time) god called Pautti who is a primeval god equated with formlessness and the concept (and absence) of neheh time and this identification leads once again to Heh of the Ogdoad, as the primeval pair of Heh and Hauhet were associated with formlessness. Once activated, time separates formlessness and allows this chaotic condition to coalesce into a palpable form. As well take note that the twin brothers are named Her and Suti, an allusion to Horus and Set, the divine combatants. The text identifies the Aten with Horus the Elder and then later on describes the Aten as being born (raised up) in beauty from Nut. A frequent epithet used for Set is 'son of Nut', so common it is largely just understood as another name for Set. Within the literature of the ancient Egyptians, mention of Set directly is often omitted being as it was a fearful reverence of the god and desire to not invoke him by using his name. In the place of using the name, Set was often referred to as the "son of Nut". 

One of the most frequently employed epithets of Seth is "son of Nut"; it is so widely known that it can be used without any further addition as an equivalent of the name Seth. It is not to be concluded from this, however, that between Nut and Seth there exists a link such as that between Isis and Horus (Harsiesis). Seth is not a child god and there is no trace of love on the part of or for his mother. The texts cursing Seth do not forget to include, that his own mother has turned against him. The epithet tells us something about Seth himself. It suggests the idea of a mother fixation in the sense of immaturity, in seeming contrast with the other epithet "great in strength." Because Seth's birth was untimely, he is not free and can scarcely be given a place by himself. He remains a part of his mother, her excrement, to speak with Sartre, or her vomit (Pyr. 205a). The texts suggest no particular casual relation between this epithet and the homosexual tendencies of Seth.
Seth, God of Confusion, H Te Velde, page 28.

Set is the dazzling one, the god's name coming from setken which means to dazzle, so this text though not naming him sure makes references to the iconography of Set relating to splendor and beauty. This alternative interpretation opens up a whole new line of thinking. It seems then the dual god Hrwyfy "He of the two faces" which is the twinning of Horus and Set, is conflated here with the Aten in this stele which is not so coincidently made for the twin brothers who share the names of these two combatants.

Hrwyfy "he of the two faces"

The Aten then becomes the encapsulation of the brothers - Horus the Elder by day as transformed in the eastern horizon and Set by night as transformed at the gates to the western horizon. I only have a couple examples, Hrwyfy and of course the twin horizon god Harakhty but it starts to become clear that the 'Hr' is designating the faces of the two gods Horus and Set and that the standard common to this twinning is the falcon. Connecting the dots could it be that Akhenaten's god, Re-Harakhty represented by the divine image of the falcon is the expression of the duality of Horus and Set?

Re-Harakhty on the left with Hathor in the tomb of Nefertari

Furthermore a close inspection of the name of the god Re-Harakhty is revealing. The 'Hr' part can mean face and is directing us to faces of the akhet and those faces would be theologically the combination of Khepri and Atum, or Horus and Set, or Shu and Tefenet. The Re in Re-Harakhty adds to this two faced god as the god at its zenith. The name of the god is telling us about transformation and time. I say this because Khepri and Atum are the transformational aspect and Shu and Tefenet represent the two concepts of time: neheh and diet. 

Shu and Tefnut were also identified with the twin Lions of the Horizon. They are shown as two lions or spotted great cats, facing away from each other with the sun on the horizon between them. These lions had various temporal meanings. They could represent yesterday and tomorrow or two forms of time: nhh (eternal recurrence) and dt (eternal sameness).
Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch, page 197.

The Aten/Re-Harakhty at daybreak in the east, represented by Shu, is creating neheh cyclical time and when the god disappears in the west we lapse into time represented by the goddess Tefenet, djet time, the time of Osiris.

Re-Harakhty at Ramesses II temple at Abu Simbel

In the papyrus below we find the "Lord to the uttermost limit" describing transforming into form from the formlessness imposed by the state of matter and time in the primeval condition.

...In the midst of the magical spells of this papyrus we find two copies of the “Book of knowing how Ra came into being, and of overthrowing Aapep.” One copy is a little fuller than the other, but they agree substantially. The words of this book are said in the opening line to have been spoken by the god Nebertcher, _i.e._ the “Lord to the uttermost limit,” or God Himself. The Egyptian Christians, or Copts, in their religious writings use this name as an equivalent of God Almighty, the Lord of All, the God of the Universe. Nebertcher says: “I am the creator of what hath come into being. I myself came into being under the form of the god Khepera. I came into being under the form of Pautti (or, in primeval time), I formed myself out of the primeval matter, I made myself out of the substance that was in primeval time.”1
1 The second version here states that the name Nebertcher is Ausares (Osiris), who is the oldest god of all.
An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature, E. A. Wallis Budge, page 68.

From this it is an interesting exercise to think of how the Aten is considered the creator of life through the act of generating time. In this conception of the cosmos, it is material creation that is to be exalted and worshipped. The Aten creates the time and space that allows creation to flourish. The Aten ceases to create when it sets in the evening and then in the hymns we have described a condition of death. When it rises at daybreak everything comes alive and creation flourishes once again. But this is all part of an ongoing cycle and within this creation as enacted by the time god you will find death and destruction of form as being necessary parts of this paradigm. Does this not eventually force you into questioning whether creation in this sense is something you want to continually take part in unless you too can become the master of transformation?

This leads to this thought that these two warring brothers, Horus and Set who are locked in an eternal struggle - do they create the cyclic condition that propels creation because of their fighting? If one side was declared victorious for evermore would this stasis cause a calamity and a catastrophic ending to the condition of cyclical time that manifests as our universe? Or is it just Horus as the avenger of his father Osiris that in victory would slay the time god and bring about a reunification of all forms while a Setian victory just perpetuates the separation and allows the continuance of neheh time? It sure seems the struggle between these two is also a catalyst for temporal cyclical time, and hence the time god.

Okay here's a thought. In the mythology of Re, Set pilots the boat of Re throughout the night in order to get past Apophis who is intent on swallowing this boat and stopping this procession.

Set fights off Apophis so cyclical time may proceed

This an elaborate metaphor for time, time in the cyclical sense that is called neheh time by the ancient Egyptians. I just wrote a lengthy blog post that contained my thoughts on the Ogdoad which is the totality of the eight deities of the primeval beginnings of creation. I noticed how these powers manifest in the creation that has come forth. Darkness, chaos, and inertia are represented by Kek and Kaukhet and in them you see a relationship to Apophis. What gets creation going is separation and this is accomplished by Heh and Hauhet as time that separates. The hidden cosmic light as Amun and Amaunet comes forth and is the impetus that enlivens the water based material androgyne that is Nun and Naunet. Formlessness becomes form. In Heliopolis it is the power of Heh that is manifest and at this place is the sun disk making time but being accosted by inertia every night which is mirroring the elemental powers of the Ogdoad. What is it that keeps this ship on course? It's Set. Set is a strongman and a magician. He is also a time god who is the separator that powers time. Set is called 'Wer Hekau' - great of magic. Extrapolating from this thought then you have to place the power of Set in the Ogdoad as an aspect of Heh. Set is the power that separates. I've been trying to find Set in Amarna but I can't and maybe that's because he's a master at transformation. His previous attempts at exclusivity failed so therefore a new disguise comes into play here? The iconography of Set is unclear and elusive by design; look at the fantastic animal that is used to represent him.

can't pin down whom Set is

It's very puzzling but now in this discourse we can see that it is suggesting something that transforms itself at will. This is what I can discern from the texts and knowledge of Akhetaten.

Akhetaten was constructed in the desert. Granted Egypt has a lot of desert but it is significant that it was built on desert land, desert being the primacy of Set. When the Aten has set on the western horizon in Akhetaten then the dual nature and transformation of the god becomes the chaos, death, and confusion of the night - in essence Set. The role of darkness and chaos known as Kek and Kaukhet in the Ogdoad is addressed by the absence of the disk in the nighttime as it undergoes transformation but it is still an aspect of the all encompassing god. It is the aspect of negation. The Aten is the dual nature of the sole god represented as both beneficent and destructive. During the day the Aten separates the earth and sky allowing for creation and at night the Aten causes chaos. It is an attempt by a very smart and cunning philosopher, Akhenaten, to formulate the Ogdoad into an entity that manifests in creation and encapsulates all the powers of pre-existence. The Aten also takes on the dual aspects of the mother and father as mentioned before and also attempts to become a representation of the two warring brothers of Horus and Set. In other words totality.

In the great hymn, the Aten is said to rest in the western lightland, this is the western akhet of Akhetaten, and a condition of darkness and death takes over. Thieves and dangerous animals abound. This is really the time of Set. He rules over this confusion and he keeps the time boat in its procession moving. In this hymn the morning rebirth has the Aten credited with dispelling the dark which would make Set an aspect of the Aten and ultimately of time.

Third Stanza: Night-Chaos
13 When you set in the western lightland,
14 Earth is in darkness
15 In the condition of death.
16 The sleepers are in (their) chambers
17`Heads covered, one eye does not see the other,
18  Were they robbed of their goods under their heads, they don't notice it.
19 Every lion comes from its den,
20 All the serpents bite.
21 Darkness is a grave,
22 Earth is in silence:
23 Their creator has set in his lightland

Fourth Stanza: Morning-Rebirth
24 At dawn you have risen in the lightland
25 And are radiant as the sundisk of daytime.
26 You dispel the dark, you cast your rays,
27 The Two Lands are in festivity daily.
Moses the Egyptian: the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Jan Assmann pages 172-173.

This is essentially the Aten as Re-Horakhty. Re generates cyclical time and the Aten transforms at the horizon points into two distinct forms that in this theology comprise existence. Before continuing on let's just look at a few puzzling coincidences. Here we have a depiction of the worship of the Aten at Akhetaten in which a daughter of Akhenaten is offering up the lettuce that is the favourite food of the gods Set and Min.

Akhenaten and Tiye have Beketaten following carrying lettuce to Aten

The Aten is given epithets that are cogent with the nomenclature of Set, specifically terms that describe them both as dazzling and radiant. In the reign of the father of Akhenaten, the pharaoh Amenhotep III, we have named with these types of descriptors the state barge, his palace complex at Malkata, and on commemorative scarabs. 

The pharaoh Amenhotep III, father of Akhenaten, furthered the fortunes of Aten. From his reign comes the earliest evidence of a priesthood and temple to Aten at Heliopolis. Several of his courtiers bore titles connecting them with the Aten cult, e.g. Hatiay 'scribe of the two granaries of the Temple of Aten in Memphis', and Ramose (not the vizier but the owner of tomb 46 in the Theban necropolis), 'steward of the mansion of the Aten', depicted with his wife going to view the sun disk. The palace of Amenhotep at Malkata on the west bank at Thebes was called 'splendour of Aten'. From the latter years of this king it was also known as the 'Per Hay' or 'home of rejoicing' - a description we shall meet again applied to part of the Great Temple of the Aten at el-Amarna. Here also, at Malkata, Amenhotep ordered the construction within sixteen days of a lake over a mile in length for the pleasure of his principal wife Queen Tiye - inaugurating it by sailing its waters on a boat called 'Aten glitters'. 
A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, George Hart, pages 38-39.

Also within the use of these descriptions of the Aten you can see how Amenhotep III is conflating the Aten with himself and scholars have picked up on this and the theology that makes the pharaoh the living image of the Aten will continue with the son Akhenaten.

The style of Amenhotep III's monument decoration underwent sweeping changes at the time of his first jubilee in Year 30, from the traditional Thutmoside style to an exaggerated art style which emphasized his new youthfulness and introduced solar- related iconography that communicated his assimilation with the creator god and the sun's disk. The style of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten's monument decoration underwent similar changes at the same time, from a traditional style in his first year or two to an exaggerated art style which emphasized his unique nature as the first born of the creator god, male and female in one.91 The long coregency model allows the kindred artistic and iconographic innovations of both kings to have occurred simultaneously in order to emphasize their ritual Atum/Shu relationship, while the separation of the two courts was dictated by the nature of that relationship. This model would also suggest that the stimulus for Akhenaten's divine father, the 'Living Re-Horakhty/Aten', was his actual father, the living, deified Amenhotep III, the 'Dazzling Aten', the most extraordinary of all of Amenhotep III's many deified forms.92
92 Battiscombe Gunn commented long ago on Akhenaten's divine 'coregent' in his 'Notes on the Aten and His Names', JEA 9 (1923), 168-70.
Amenhotep III and Amarna: Some New Considerations, W. Raymond Johnson, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 82, page 81.

As referred to in the above passage, the style of art during Akhenaten's reign underwent a radical departure from the accepted standards of the day. I wonder if the style of art at Amarna was a desire to transgress boundaries? To cause disorder within acceptable social norms? This behaviour is of course the domain of Set - the god of confusion.

Before moving on let's just take a closer look at the idea of Set as a vehicle and how it could relate to the procession of the sun disk. I'm drawn to this idea because of Amenhotep's description of his pleasure boat as being 'Aten glitters'.

From the Saitic period on we often see depicted on coffins, in temples, in tombs and on head-rests a bull, i.e. the Apis bull, carrying a mummy to the tomb. According to a vignette with accompanying text in the pap. Jumilhac, Bata, that is Seth carries Osiris on his back in the form of a bull. (Papyrus Jumilhac XX.)

It appears from a Pyramid text that this idea of Seth as a bull carrying Osiris is ancient. Osiris is addressed as follows:
"I have killed for you him who killed you… You are upon the back of him who is in form of a bull." (Pyramid Texts 1544 a, d. In Pyramid Text 1124 c it is said that the feet of the heavenly throne of the king or Osiris are hooves of the great bull.)
The final clause of this utterance (Pyramid Text 1550 a.) shows, that the bull or bull's head is connected with a ship. As the boat of Sokaris was decorated with the head of a gazelle and a bull that had been sacrificed, thus it seems that the ship of Osiris could be decorated with the head of a bull, so that the sacrificial bull representing Seth must carry Osiris as a ship.
Seth, God of Confusion, H Te Velde, page 97-98.

It's not a stretch to say then that the strength of Set is to be harnessed in the material world and used as a vehicle to be in service to your higher self.  Projecting the idea onto the study we are currently undertaking, Set's role in the retinue of Re becomes a carrier of the forces that create cyclical time as well as a force that can defeat the forces of entropy as represented by Apophis. In terms of Akhenaten's conception of the Aten and what I have postulated concerning the dual nature of Re-Harakhty, Set as one half of this duality, takes on the role of the disk; the disk having the role and attributes of a celestial boat.

This episode in the desert was not the first time the ancient Egyptians witnessed a pharaoh worshipping just one god at the exclusion of all the others. Set and monotheism appears with the conquering semitic Hyksos pharaoh named Apophis establishing the Egyptian god he will worship as Set because he is the same warlike and thunderous god he worships back in the levant. With this worship of Set comes a refusal to honour any of the other gods of Egypt which greatly displeased the Egyptians and was considered criminal.

Two reigning kings of the 19th dynasty called themselves "The Sethian,"7 and Ramesses II openly ­venerated Seth.8 There is, however, another way to read (pharaoh) Apophis' transgression. According to this reading, the actual breach of Apophis was not the veneration of Seth per se, but the fact that the Hyksos ruler did not worship any other god in the entire land except Seth. The text uses the wording wpwt Stḫ which is strongly reminiscent of the formulation wpwt ḥr.f "no other but him," attributed to the Aten, and which HORNUNG (1999: 93) regards as "the decisive step toward monotheism and its exclusivity." 
In his inscription in Akhmin, king Ay settles the score with the "evil" past of Akhenaten, the "heretic king," declaring that in his own times anyone could make an offering to "his own god."9 We may conclude that the main offense of Akhenaten in Ay's eyes was that, like Apophis, he venerated  "solely one god" (the Aten) and banished the worship of other gods. 
7  Papyrus Turin mentions a 14th dynasty king called "The Sethian," see BECKERATH 1999: 112-113.
8  For a recent discussion, see YOYOTTE 1999: 48-54; STADEL-MANN 1965: 66. 
9  LD III, 114. 
King Apophis of Avaris and the Emergence of Monotheism, Orly Goldwasser, page 129-130.

This passage below from the Papyrus Sallier I documents the transgression of pharaoh Apophis of not worshipping any of the other gods of Egypt. Towards the end of this passage, it is claimed he sacrificed at the break of day to Set which is alluding to the power in the horizon of transformation once again which was known as the akhet. 

So King Apophis, L.P.H., adopted Seth for himself as lord, and he refused to serve any god that was in the entire land ex[cept] Seth. He built a temple of fine workmanship for the eternity next to the House of the [King Apo]phis, L.P.H., and he appeared [at break of] day in order to sacrifice ... daily to Seth, while the officials [of the palace], L.P.H., carried garlands, exactly as is practiced (in) the temple of Pre-Harakhte. 
Papyrus Sallier I
The Literature of Ancient Egypt, Translation by Edward F. Wente, William Kelly Simpson, ed., New Haven and London, 1973, page 77 ff.

Also it is noted that in the temple built for Set the worship is exactly like that of Pre-Harakhte (Re-Harakhty). Now this is interpreted as being an offensive thing to do and a slight to the worship of Re-Harakhty however if you have been following along in my argument, here you might come to a different conclusion. The worship of Set was exactly like that of Re-Harakhty because he was an aspect of him. The previous idea in the passage lends credence to this speculation as it explains the Hyksos ruler treated Set as a horizon god as demonstrated by his worship and sacrifice occurring at daybreak. From the Beatty Papyrus we know that Re-Harakhty was very fond of Set.

"And Re-Harakhty said : give me Set, the son of Nut, that he may stay with me, being with me like a child, and he shall thunder in heaven and be feared." 
Papyrus Beatty 1, 16, 4.

Akhenaten refused to worship the other gods of Egypt as well and this too brought accusation of criminality, we would say heresy, from the Egyptians after they got rid of him. 

...the "heretic  king" Akhenaten, when documented in administrative records of the 19th dynasty, is called p3-ḫrw n 3ḫt-'Itn "the enemy from Akhetaten" or sbi - "rebel."22 His very name is never mentioned, not to mention placed in a cartouche or given a divine classifier.
22  GARDINER 1905, 14-92; also KRI III 15, 8; 15 (I am grateful to Dr. Deborah Sweeney for the last reference). 
King Apophis of Avaris and the Emergence of Monotheism, Orly Goldwasser, page 131.

When Set fell out of favour he is also referred to as a rebel. In the Book of the Victory over Set, Set the "son of Nut" is referred to as a rebel:

[Recite:] Back! Rebel of abominable character, whose step has been impeded by Re, who (already) fought in (his mother's) womb,
who did evil, who stepped outside the (prescribed) path,
who fell down because of his slaughter,
who loved the fight, who enjoyed quarrel,
who covered his face against him who is older than him,
who created evil, who caused grief
in enmity to the father of his fathers,
who avoids laws, who uses force,
who stands there as archer (?),
robber, lord of the lie, ruler of deceit,
leader of criminals,
who rejoices over (treacherous) abandonment, who hates friendship,
whose heart is haughty among the gods,
who sows enmity, who creates destruction,
the evil one who incites rebellion,
lord of robbery who rejoices in greed,
lord of theft, who creates rapine,
who causes grief and creates wounds,
who devises rebellion out of evil.

-----------------------------------------------------------

They justify Osiris, First of the Westerners, wn nfr
against the miserable Seth, son of Nut, and his followers. Heliopolis rejoices, Thebes shouts with joy,
Memphis is in joy.
Busiris and Abydos are renewed,
Herakleopolis is in glee, n-Arf stands firm
the Hnb protects what is in it,
his arms are strong, to cause the fall of the rebel,
he has fetched the head of him, the unsuccessful.
Horus has imbued the rebel with fear.

"Robber! Lord of lies; king of deceit; gangleader of criminals; who is satisfied with desertion and hates friendship; braggart among the gods, who causes enmity and occasions murder; Typhon, who creates rebellion; lord of looting, who rejoices at greed; master-thief, who suscitates theft; who gives offence"…
Seth, God of Confusion, H Te Velde, page 151.

Though Akhenaten may not have considered his theology and new way of thinking as synonymous with Set, it seems that after he was deposed he was compared to the negative aspects of Set. As well it has been shown that in the aftermath of the Amarna period the name Akhenaten was removed from the temples and the name never directly mentioned which are all similar actions used in the avoidance of addressing the god Set in temple art and worship.

The theology of Akhenaten as I have described still references the powers of the original eight of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis however these remain bound within the Aten and his representative here on earth, who is the Pharaoh. The malice shown towards Amun and the destruction and erasure of that god seem related to light and issues of humankind as carriers of the light. There was no room for that in the theology of Akhenaten as the light was provided by the power of Shu, the neheh, in combination with the beneficence of the Pharaoh and that was all that was needed to satisfy the needs of the populace. It was Ka based and in that regard was the life force that was needed to sustain life. That was what was provided to the populace and what they should be grateful for in worship. There was no concept of the a soul or a light within in this religion so Amun had to go. What I find fascinating are the stories of Set who is essentially doing the same thing with a different strategy. Set kills the personal light within us all called Osiris, and then harangues the son Horus who is the light reborn. The claims of Akhenaten as being the first monotheist are unfounded as it is Set and continually Set who demands monotheistic worship and this was to be accomplished through murder and mayhem at first. When that didn't work this idea manifests once again more nuanced and with guile as Akhenaten later appears on the scene to reintroduce monotheistic principles but is a henotheist at first until he ramps up his well thought out plan further into his reign. The attempted murder of the god Amun is enacted as a parallel to the murder of Osiris. Once again I'll mention there is no mention of Osiris at Akhetaten and with the erasure of the memory of Amun, the destruction of the light within, the soul, would have been accomplished. The Amarna period at its base level was another trickster scheme by the god Set to rule as one with humankind left to serve in perpetuity. Today, with the decline of religiosity in the west, this assault continues with materialism and the worship of stuff. In any event, the ancient Egyptians saw through this and overthrew and banished this asshole called Akhenaten. Set and monotheism moved on to beguile humankind in a later manifestation but it was at this point in the dynastic history of ancient Egypt that they knew they had to make an attempt at placating Set lest he scheme once again to become the sole god.

What did change in Egypt in the immediate aftermath of the post Amarna period was the rise of Set in the coming to power of the Ramesside kings. Set was given a prominent place in the court of the pharaoh as perhaps a form of appeasement after the whole debacle at Amarna. It was like theologically there became a need to acknowledge the power of Set or these episodes would continue to beguile the Egyptians. The early 19th dynasty rulers were alternately named Ramesses and Seti. Ramesses means the son of Re and Seti of course is named after Set. There is something we have missed here though and that is that the son of Re is referring to Set. The two names of Ramesses and Seti were describing the same theological relationship of the pharaoh to Re with the pharaoh manifesting as Set.

Ramesses II fights at Kadesh on the river Orontes like Seth who is 'Baal on the battlefield'.
The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, George Hart, page 144,

In terms of kingship they were continuing the ideas put forth by Akhenaten concerning the primacy of the pharaoh in that they left no doubt that they were the divine representation of the god on earth. This is most apparent at Ramesses II's temple at Abu Simbel where four colossal figures of the Pharaoh sit prominently before the entrance to the temple.

Ramesses II at Abu Simbel

The difference between the Ramesside interpretation of divine kingship and Akhenaten's theology was that they left room for all the gods though they left no doubt of their warrior like natures and devotion to the cyclical gods, favouring the procession of Re who in his image created them as reflections in the guise of Set. To further illustrate this let's look at the names given to the male heirs to the throne in the 18th dynasty as we will see this concept of the pharaoh being a son of the god by name is not new. The two most popular names were Amenhotep and Thothmose. Looking at the latter name it means son of Thoth. Thoth is the wisdom god and the titular male deity of the primeval Hermopolis in combination with the feminine Hathor. Their combination here relates to the original unity and the coming forth and expression of this idea finds its flowering in mankind as the light that is resident within us. This idea we know is true because of the other popular name Amenhotep which means Amun is satisfied, is at peace, is at rest. I've previously written about how Amun is the cosmic light that is hidden but through the process of creation comes forth on a grand scale as the light of the sun, the Amun of Amun-Re, or on a micro scale the hidden light within us waiting to be discovered. So with that understanding you can see how the two names of Thothmose and Amenhotep are complimentary and are in essence describing the same concept of the light being resident in the heir to the throne. So this idea was prevalent among royalty and would be applied to the god that was worshipped by the royal family at the time. So as the worship changed from being Amun centric to Re-Harakhty, we eventually see with Akhenaten the violent repression of Amun in favour of his conception that culminates in the Aten. The Ramesses dynasty comes to favour the god Set but not at the expense of the other gods, having learned from the lessons of the failure of Akhenaten and also the lingering hatred of the delta dwelling semitic Hyksos and their exclusive affinity for Set that came before them.

Before ending this speculation there is also the question of worship which the discipline of Egyptology is not equipped to deal with. How did Akhenaten come into contact with this god? Egyptology as a discipline aligns itself with the principles of scientific enquiry, which is a noble endeavour, however that means the exclusion of any belief in the existence of gods and goddesses. It is possible within the sphere of human experience to enter into realms where there are spirits present. This can be argued to be illusory, hallucinatory, or non real  - basically false constructs of altered brain functioning, which are all valid arguments, however that does not negate the ability to do this. So with that in mind and the ancient Egyptian desire and know how of how to enter into these states (they put the chem in alchemy and chemistry as derived from the their ancient name of Kemet) it would have been theoretically possible through ritual and intent in combination with psychoactive chemicals for Akhenaten to enter into states that allowed for repeated contact with this entity (or he was perhaps schizophrenic). When you comb through the evidence as presented in the 18th dynasty you find the impetus to move from the worship of Amun to Re-Harakhty has this curious episode where the future pharaoh Thothmose IV describes a dream he had while passed out in front of the great sphinx on the Giza plateau where he is promised the throne if he will clear the sand away from this monument, the sphinx monument being a representation of Re-Harakhty. He promises to do so and ascends to the throne, though he is not a direct heir, and thus the attachment to the god as Re-Harakhty that eventually becomes Aten worship. Was this dream and subsequent upheaval that followed it in the annals of the historical 18th dynasty pharaohs a product of an altered state and contact with an entity who styled himself the ruler of the horizons and who eventually declared there are no others gods? Was the attempted murder of Amun hatched on the Giza plateau at this very moment? Is the clearing away of sand a metaphor for reestablishing the worship and primacy of this god Re-Harakhty?

Akhenaten as Re-Harakhty - the Great Sphinx

Hans Ollermann via CC by 2.0

So in conclusion the whole episode at Amarna is intriguing because it was suppressed in the immediate aftermath and that leads to questions of why. This mystery then leads to speculation, which is buttressed by the promotion of a god that was considered the all that has been discerned as a first attempt at monotheism, monotheism being this concept that has gripped the western mind as being, for some curious reason, an enlightened forward step in thinking therefore Akhenaten is acclaimed as some kind of innovative iconoclast as opposed to a deluded cult leader. What further gives charge to this whole situation is the role of Moses in the Hebrew story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt as this myth has Moses being raised in the court of the Pharaoh and being learned in the ways of the Egyptians. Moses introduces the worship of the one god, Yhvh, to the Israelite masses and it is then very tempting to conflate Akhenaten with Moses as many have done. The problem with this is that there's the problem of historicity to overcome. Akhenaten is a verified historical figure while Moses is a mythical figure. Until this can be proven otherwise, trying to connect Moses to Akhenaten, however circumstantial or pained, is rather pointless. However the push towards monotheism I'd argue has always been present in ancient Egypt and also in the thinking of their semitic neighbours. It all started with the ancient Egyptian god Set and his murder of Osiris and subsequent attempted murder of his son Horus. The semitic Hyksos worshipped Set and excluded the veneration of the other gods of Egypt. Set has also threatened the gods with annihilation in 'The Contendings of Horus and Set' if he didn't get his way. In Akhetaten we have the erasure of the other gods and especial malice shown towards Amun. And finally we have the story of the Israelites and their Exodus out of Egypt and the subsequent covenant they enter into with their god who forbids the worship of other gods as well. So although Akhetaten and the Aten have been consigned to the dust bowl of history, the push towards one god, a male one at that, did eventually rise out of the middle east and succeed and we live with that legacy today.