The Initiatory Process in Ancient Egypt
Author(s):
Max Guilmot
Label: Rosicrucian Order, AMORC
Publisher(s):
Rosicrucian Order, AMORC
Studio: Rosicrucian Order, AMORC
Manufacturer: Rosicrucian Order, AMORC
Binding: Pamphlet
List Price: $6.95
Our Price: $6.95
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Rosicrucian Egyptologist Max Guilmot translates from hieroglyphs and interprets some of the rites of the ancient Egyptian mystery schools.
Customer Reviews
The first thing that you need to know about the Rosicrucian published: "The Initiatory Process in Ancient Egypt" is that it is only 34 pages long.
The second thing to know is that if you do a little hunting around on the Web you can find a free version of this book for download from a Rosicrucian site. I know because I ordered this book, then tried to find out information about the author only to discover too late that I could have gotten the book for free. The two versions ARE identical, except for the groovy cover art.
So what about the content? Primarily the book focuses on one specific initiation: the initiatory death and rebirth of an individual. The purpose of such a ritual is the overcoming of one's fear of death. And the book primarily deals with these rites as practiced at the cult center of Abydos in upper Egypt, west of the Nile and north of Thebes. Abydos was the reputed burial site for Osiris' head; Osiris being the equivalent of Dionysius in the Greek tradition with regard to initiations. Guilmot believes that the surviving Osireion at Abydos is a replica built by Seti I of the original Holy Sepulcher of Osiris, also at Abydos. He draws his conclusion from his interpretation of a combination of a picture and several hieroglyphs on the feet of a single sarcophagus now housed in Marseilles and two brief descriptions on several papyri. Even he admits that it is pure speculation. Having made this tenuous connection he goes on to describe what he believes were the initiatory rites taking place at Abydos.
To Guilmot, Anubis is the conductor of the initiate to the realm of the gods and he quotes several sections of original text describing the ceremonies an intiate would go through. His primary source is the Book of Coming Forth By Day (sic The Book of the Dead). Based on my having read numerous other texts about Egyptian religious practice I have to agree with Guilmot's use of the source material in conjunction with the architecture present in the Osireion. There seems to be a close correlation between the architectural elements present at Abydos and the mythology as described in original text materials.
The author next describes the process of preparing a candidate for the meeting with the gods which occupied the first portion of the book. This section of the book is largely a number of excerpts from the aforementioned papyri, Coffin Texts and the Book of Going Forth By Day. However, only several sections are quoted. So we are left with the briefest descpritions of these presumed rites.
The next section of the book describes the attainment of illumination. However, don't get your hopes up, he merely quotes original Egyptian texts that are necessarily obscure. These quotations are interspersed with supposition on Guilmot's part. Unfortunately, this is the case with the bulk of the book. Namely it is mostly supposition with only marginal textual support. However, I give credit to the author in that he has a shamanic interpretation of the ancient Egyptian sacred writings. In other words, his assumption is that these texts and rituals were conducted on a living person and not on a dead King/Pharoah. In this, I am totally in agreement.
In conclusion, I believe that Jeremy Naydler's excellent "Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts" is a vastly superior description of these sorts of Egyptian shamanic practices. They are more detailed, more comprehensive, more thorough and more convincingly discussed in Naydler's work than here. The primary strengths of this little volume are: its inexpensive price; the author's enthusiasm for the subject; and the publishing of obscure photos of important Egyptian sites and artifacts.
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