The messianic mystery which has caused unparalleled mental trouble to the world did not originate with, nor was the solution to be found in, the biblical collection of the Hebrew writings. The Egyptian mesu, to anoint, and as a name for the anointed, is earlier than the Jewish messiah. Nor would there have been any typical Christ the anointed but for the making of the karast-mummy. We have to look a long way beyond these books to learn how salvation came into the world by water, or a saviour could be represented by the fish. It was thus salvation came to Egypt periodically in the new life of the Nile, and thence the saviour, who was imaged in the likeness of a fish. According to the mythical rendering Horus-Iu-em-hetep was a saviour because he came with plenty of food and water in the inundation, as the shoot of, or as the child on the papyrus. In the eschatology he represented the saviour who showed the way by which the manes might attain eternal life, when immortality was held to be conditional and dependent upon right conduct and true character. A doctrine of messiahship was founded on the ever-coming messu, or child of the inundation in the preanthropomorphic phase of symbolism, in which the type might be the fish, the papyrus-shoot, the beetle, hawk or calf, each one of which bears witness that when the infant-likeness was adopted as a figure of the ever-coming saviour or messiah the human type was just as non-historical as any of its predecessors. The advent of the messu (the Hebrewmessiah) was periodic in accordance with the natural phenomena: not once for all. Once for all could have no meaning in relation to that which was ever-coming from age to age, from generation to generation, or for ever and ever. Eternity itself to the Egyptians of the Ritual was aeonian, and synonymous with millions of repetitions, therefore ever-coming in the likeness of perennial renewal, whether in the water-spring of earth or the day-spring on high, the papyrus-shoot, the green branch, or as Horus the child in whom a saviour was at length embodied as a figure of eternal source. At the foundation of all sacrifice we find the great Earth-mother, following the human mother, giving herself for food and drink. Next the type of sacrifice was that of the ever-coming child. Ten thousand years ago a divine ideal of matchless excellence had been portrayed in elder Horus as a voluntary sacrifice of self not for the sins of the world, but for human sustenance. This voluntary victim took the parents place, and suffered in the mothers stead. Thenceforth the papyrus-plant was represented by the shoot the tree by the branch; the sheep by the lamb the saviour by the infant as an image of perpetual renewal in life by means of his own death and transformation in furnishing the elements of life. Next Horus, as the foremost of the seven elemental powers, passed into the solar mythos, where the typical virgin and child were reproduced and constellated as repeaters of periodic time and season in the zodiac. The Jesus-legend is Egyptian, but it was at first without the dogma of historic personality. We have now to follow it in the circuit of precession, where it might be traced back to a beginning with the sign of Virgo. But for the present purpose, the birthplace of the virgins child was in the sign of Leo when the vernal equinox was resting in the lion constellation. The messu, or the messianic prince of peace, was born into the world at Memphis in the cult of Ptah as the Egyptian Jesus, with the title of Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace or plenty and good fortune as the type of an eternal youth. Here we may note in passing that this divine child, Iu-em-hetep, as the image of immortal youth, the little hero of all later legend, the Kamite Herakles, had been one of the eight great gods of Egypt who were in existence twenty thousand years ago. This wondrous child, who is the figure of ever-coming and of perennial renewal in the elements of life, was also known by name as Kheper, Horus, Aten, Tum or Nefer-Atum according to the cult. He was continued at On or Annu. The title likewise was repeated in the new religion, when Iu-em-hetep became the representative of Atum-Ra. His mothers name at On was Iusaas, she who was great (as) with Iusa or Iusu, the ever-coming child, the messiah of the inundation. Such doctrine, however, did not originate as uterine or come the human way, although it might be expressed in human terminology. We have now to track the ever-coming child Iusa, Iusu or Jesus in the sphere of time as the son of Iusaas and of Atum, who was Ra in his first sovereignty; not merely in the round of the lesser year, but in the movement of precession as determined by the changing equinox or by the shifting position of the pole. As we have shown, the zodiacal signs were set in heaven according to the seasons of the Egyptian year and in the annual circuit of the sun. The birthplace of the inundation and the grapes was figured in or near the sign of Virgo or the Virgin, the mother of the child who brought the new life to the land in water as Ichthus the fish and in food as Horus on his papyrus. But Horus the traveller of eternity has to be tracked and followed in the movement of precession. And thus the new beginning for the present quest is in the sign of Leo. The priests of On attributed a new creation of the world, or the heavens, to Atum-Ra. This was the cultivated enclosure or garden of a new beginning. And this garden of a new beginning or creation was visibly featured in the southern heaven. There ran the river Nile as the one water from its hidden source, as it flowed in the starry stream Eridanus, and meandered through the Aarru-garden that was made for Atum, in the likeness of which the future paradise was represented in Amenta. According to the Osirian rendering, the later Aarru-field is the garden of the grape. The typical tree of life in an Egypto-Greek planisphere is the grapevine. This is the tree still represented by the female vine-dresser and the male grape-gatherer in the decans of Virgo. Orion rose up when the grapes were ripe to represent the Deliverer, who was coming full of wine. The goblet or mixing-bowl in which the drink was brewed to hugely celebrate the Uaka-festival of the inundation is constellated in the sign of Krater. The ancient enemy of man, the evil dragon of drought, is imaged in the form of Hydra, waiting to devour the virgins child the moment it is born. At one time the birthplace in the stellar mythos was where Sothis rose as opener of the year and herald of the inundation. This was the star of Hathor and her messu or messianic babe who came to make war on the dragon and to bruise the serpents head. And Iusaas was a form of Hathor. The fulfilment of the primitive promises of the coming child as bringer of all good things was annual in the astronomical mythology. The babe, the birth, the birthplace and the bringer to birth, were all continued in the solar cult, from this, the starting-point, with Sothis now as the announcer of the inundation, and the life of vegetation figured as the young deliverer Horus on his papyrus, or the later Atum-Horus issuing from the lotus on the day of come thou to me, the first day of the Egyptian year or new creation. Time in the old year of the Great Bear and the inundation had not been subject to the changes in precession. In this year there was but one birthplace for the typical child who originated in Horus of the inundation as the figure of food and bringer of the water, and therefore of salvation. Also there was but one date for the birthday of the child, namely, the first of the month Tekki (or Thoth) which we equate with July 25, when the five dies non are also counted in the reckoning of the year. If Ra had not discovered the co-partnery of the Great Mother and Sebek-Horus the Fish of the inundation, and substituted the time of the sun, the birthplace of the babe might have remained for ever fixed in heaven. Time in the ordinary year was always kept and reckoned by the recurring seasons; firstly by the inundation. In the greater year this time was rectified by the retrocession of the equinoxes and the changing position of the pole. Thus time was kept by double entry. And when the birthplace of the messianic child was made zodiacal it travelled round the backward circuit of precession to fulfil a course of twenty-six thousand years. The great year might have gone its way unrecognized but for this change of polestars or the backward lapsing of the equinoxes being observed and registered by the astronomers. It was solar time, which had to be continually revised and readjusted by means of the stars. The inundation was a fixture in relation to the earth, and a primary factor in the year of the Great Bear, the end and re-beginning of which were memorized by means of the Sut-Heb or festival of the tail—that is, the tail of the Great Bear as pointer at its southernmost longitude, which was dependent on the revolution of the sphere. The Great Bear, hippopotamus or crocodile, was then the stellar bringer-forth to Horus of the inundation. But with Horus, born of Virgo in the zodiac, the birthplace of the babe was figured in the vernal equinox, and thus became subject to the changes in precession. It parted company with the lesser year of the inundation to travel from sign to sign around the circuit of the worlds great year. Fourteen thousand years ago the vernal equinox coincided with the sign of Virgo and the autumn equinox with the sign of Pisces. And here the learned writer Eratosthenes has a word to say upon this point. He is a most unimpeachable witness for the Egyptians; a better could not be subpoenaed. He was born in the year 276 BC. He was keeper of the great Alexandrian library and the most learned Greek in Egypt at the time. Amongst other subjects he wrote on was astronomy and he testifies to the fact that the festival of Isis, which was celebrated in his time at the autumn equinox, had been celebrated when the Easter equinox was in Virgo. This perfectly agrees with the position of Isis, the Virgin Mother in the zodiac. During those six months in the great year = six signs, the child as periodic fulfiller of time and season in the zodiac, together with the birth and birthplace, was receding through the six signs in precession, from Virgo to Pisces. Thirteen thousand years later the autumn equinox coincided once more with the sign of Virgo. Now there is no meeting-point of the mythology with the astronomy more obvious than in these two signs of the zodiac. But it is impossible that this imagery should have been constellated in the planisphere the last time the equinoxes entered them, which was about the year 255 BC, where they still linger at the present moment. And the time before that, in round numbers, was 26,000 years previously. It is a fixed fundamental fact that the death and rebirth of the year were commemorated at this time from the 20th to the 25th of July, when the birth of Horus was announced by the star Sothis or the bennu = phoenix. It is equally a fact that when the solar Horus had entered the zodiac the birthplace was shifted from sign to sign, according to the movement in precession, from Virgo to Leo, from Cancer to the Gemini, from Taurus to Aries, from Aries to Pisces. The pathway of eternity was now depicted in the circle of precession. In this the sonship of Horus was continued after the fatherhood of God had been established, and Horus became the manifestor for the eternal in the sphere of solar time. Hence the sayings of Horus in the Ritual. I am Horus, the prince of eternity. Witness of Eternity is my name.He calls himself the persistent traveller on the highways of heaven, which he surveys as the everlasting one. I am Horus, he says, who steppeth onwards through eternity—without stopping or ever standing still. This was Horus, otherwise the Egyptian Jesus, as the ever-coming son (Iu-sa) in all the years of time that culminated in the all-inclusive cycle of precession. Horus as the shoot, or the later wheat-ear (spica), had been brought forth when the birthplace was in Virgo. If we look on this as a sign in precession, the next birthplace in the backward course is in the sign of Leo, in which Horus was the lion of the solar power that was doubled in the vernal equinox. When the Osiris comes to witness the judgment on the mount of glory, he sees the lion forms called the Kherufu, which are three in number. Two of these are figures of the Double Force, as shown in the vignette to chapter 18, and the one in the centre is the lion of the double lions = the double force, as the lion or as the solar disk. Now Atum is this solar lion on the mount which is in the equinox, and which can be thus identified with the lion-sign or sign of the lions in the zodiac. Atum is the god with the lions face, who is also called the man-faced lion. He is said to lay the foundations of the eternal house. That is, in building the new heaven which was based upon the equinoxes in the circuit of precession, at a certain starting-point, including all the previous foundations laid by Ptah and Taht, Shu and Sut, and by the first Great Mother in the heptanomis. Excerpt From: ANCIENT EGYPT THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD BOOK 12 [p.727] Gerald Massey masseiana.org/aebk12.htm
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:49:51 +0000
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