SUBLUNAR SPACE - akephalos

Mermaids and Disk-Headed Gods

2019-01-17T20:00:00+01:00

This article is about a powerful synchronicity I had at the end of December. If you find hearing about other people's synchronicities equally boring to having to listen to their dreams, just stop here. If you find such things weirdly interesting or at least entertaining, feel free to read on...

When we became parents a bit over two years ago, the lives of my wife T. and I have changed dramatically. Procrastination has been wiped out completely and quiet moments have become rare treasures. Before, we used to watch several movies a week, now it has become one movie a week, often even less. We have no TV and no Netflix or similar subscriptions and I usually get to choose what we watch, simply because I am a bit less exhausted than T. and I still manage to somehow search and organize a movie.

On December 30th we found a moment of quiet time to watch something, but I was too tired to come up with anything and let T. choose a flick. She said she wanted to see "Mermaids" with Cher from 1990 again because she liked it as a teenager. I had never watched this movie, I like Cher, mermaids keep popping up in my life, so I was into it!

Laptop on our bed, earbuds plugged, I had no idea what kind of synchro-mystical rollercoaster-ride this seemingly innocent "girl flick" would turn out to be...

Mermaids

Here's a quick summary of the movie's setting and plot, without spoilers:

Rachel Flax, played by Cher, is a self-obsessed, freedom-loving, and hopelessly promiscuous mother of two girls, Charlotte and Kate. Her relationships seem to always end in a disaster after which she packs her daughters and her belongings to move to a far away city to start a new life. We learn about this ongoing pattern from the narrator of the movie: the older teenage daughter Charlotte, who is obsessed with Catholicism despite the family being Jewish. Her smaller sister Kate is a talented swimming athlete and collects many prizes for it. We also learn that Kate's father was a one-night-stand and Rachel refuses to talk about Charlotte's dad, who stole her favourite car. The movie portraits the family trying to build a new life in a town near Boston. Rachel jumping into yet another relationship with a local shoe shop owner and Charlotte is fighting an inner struggle between her plans to become a Catholic nun and hopelessly falling in love with the local church bell ringer and school bus driver Joe. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Hollywood family-comedy love-drama unfolding...

(more on Wikipedia)

Magical Research

Ridiculously cheesy, huh? Yep... To understand why this movie had an impact on me, first a bit of background information without getting too deep into details:

In the last year I have been immersed in collaborative research on the "Decans" of the Ptolemaic Era of Egypt, a period during which these ancient asterism deities of fate became attached to the Ecliptic and turned into rulers over 10° segments of the Zodiac. The most famous asterisms of the ancient Decans are Sirius (Sothis) and several stars that make up Orion (Sah). Sothis was one of the many forms of the goddess Isis and Sah was connected to Osiris.

Besides the ongoing Decan research I was also currently reading Al Cummins' "Book of the Magi" and looking into cited source material, because I wanted to produce some talismans and materia magica related to the Three Magi. Their feast day of Epiphany was coming up and I found out that it coincided not only with a New Moon and a Solar Eclipse near the South Node, but also with the sun entering the sidereal Egyptian Decan of Kenmu known to the Greek as Kommes, who was depicted as an anthropomorphic god with a golden disk instead of a head. He is often referred to as being "headless", what intrigued me due to my other ongoing research on "headlessness" and the Headless Rite. In addition, the South Node in Vedic Mythology is associated with the headless god Ketu, whose severed head is living on as his brother Rahu, the North Node.

Synchronicities

Literally the first image of the movie, before the opening title, is a depiction of the asterism of Orion. It turns into an animation of stars forming the letter O of the word ORION, the production company of the movie. Not only Decan-related, but also the three stars on Orion's belt have been referred to as "The Three Kings". It made me smile, thinking "Oh what a funny coincidence..."

Not only have I always had a crush on Winona Ryder, who plays the wannabe Catholic nun Charlotte, but I felt uncannily awkward about certain parallels of her weird spiritual obsessions despite bein born into a different faith. I sometimes find myself in a somewhat similar position, being born Protestant, raised agnostic, now husband to a Jewish wife and technically also father of a Jewish daughter, but dabbling in Catholic folk-magic, having the Blessed Virgin of Candelaria on my altar and working with the Three Magi among other Saints.

Anyways, just a few minutes into the movie came this scene that made me jump up from bed, mouth and eyes wide open:

Scene description: Charlotte finds a photo of her father in one of her Catholic hymn-books on the page of "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord Almighty". It is a black and white photo that is torn at the top, it depicts a man leaning at the front-grill of his 1950s Dodge car, wearing shiny two-tone wingtip leather shoes. The head of the man is missing, because the photo is torn. The Wyoming state license-plate of the car says 25-1836. The image zooms in and fades, it turns into a childhood memory of Charlotte: we can see a Solar Eclipse, then we see Charlotte, around 4 years old, looking straight into the sun. Hands of a man appear, putting darkened paper-glasses on her eyes, saying: "Honey, it's an eclipse. Put these on." - The camera takes her perspective, looking at the black silhouette of the man against the solar eclipse. His head appears as the eclipsing disk of the sun. She puts her hands up against the sun and looks down to the man's shoes. We see the same shoes as on the photo. The memory fades and Charlotte's narrator voice says "One day he'll come back. I just hope he can find us." She talks about her worries and starts praying. We see her close the door of her bedroom and kneeling down in front of a small altar depicting a nativity scene featuring the Virgin Mary, baby Jesus, and figurines that could be Magi as well as shepherds.

Now, what are the chances that among the very few movies I have time to watch nowadays I get to see one a week before Epiphany coinciding with a Solar eclipse and the headless or disk-headed Decan, with an obviously symbolic scene like this:

A girl looks into a Solar Eclipse, her hands raised in a posture that is uncannily reminiscent of the Egyptian adoration gesture (see below), looking at a solar-disk-headed man - and all that after finding a headless photograph of a man in front of a car with the numbers 18 and 36 featured on the license-plate (The disk-headed Decan Kenmu is the 18th of 36 Decans) in a hymn-book on the page of "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord Almighty" after which we see the Virgin Mary and The Magi?

Paralyzed from this synchro-mystical punch into my face I managed to watch the rest of the movie which kept being littered with smaller synchronicities, like Rachel reclining on a sofa dressed like an Egyptian pharaoh or goddess; Charlotte mentioning Saint Margaret of Antioch, about whom I had thought and read about just the day before; Charlotte getting bored of Catholicism at some point after cognitive dissonance with her growing sexual desires and turning towards Greek Mythology; and so on and so forth.

Oh, and the title "Mermaids": it has really nothing to do with the movie's story at all, besides maybe Kate's swimming obsession and a scene where Rachel is dressed as a mermaid for a costume-party. But it had meaning for me personally, not only because my sun-sign is Pisces, but also due to some random uncanny mermaid encounters in both, dreams and everyday life I've had throughout the whole last year. The most profound one was during last year's Venus Retrograde period in which I visited Warsaw. The city's mythological icon is a fierce mermaid depicted on two statues that I both visited and did some spirit-of-place rituals at. The whole visit culminated in a series of synchronicities and some important realizations about my relationship to myself and my body which eventually led to a new spiritual side-path: Tai Chi and Chi Gung.

I also looked into the lyrics of the hymn in Charlotte's book and found two small things:

"Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee." - the Decan stars are counted when they rise heliacally, meaning together with the sun in the morning.
"All the saints adore Thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;" - Saints with golden crowns? Like the Three Magi?

Aftermath

Did I overreact? Am I turning insane or maybe just a bit paranoid? I don't know...I still get goosebumps thinking about this movie. After a successful Epiphany dedicated to the Three Magi I immediately dove into research on disk-headed Egyptian gods, especially in relation to Osiris. I've had this in the back of my head and briefly touched on the subject before, but had kind of forgotten about it. Well not anymore...and of course not surprisingly at all after "Mermaids": I stumbled upon some really interesting stuff that ties my two ongoing research projects on the Decans and The Headless One together. I am still in the process of putting all that into a text which will eventually become a future article.

After all I asked my wife T. why she had wanted to see this specific movie and she admitted that she does not know. Apparently it just popped up in her mind after she had forgotten about it since her teenage years. Funny coincidence indeed...

Three Wise Kings

2019-01-15T20:00:00+01:00

(version 2.0 updated 6/01/2020)

The Three Magi, or Drei Könige as they are called here in Germany, were my favourite characters in the Christmas tale when I was a kid: their names seemed so foreign and exotic and hey: they followed a star and ended up being the first ones to visit baby Jesus and brought him gold and other stuff that I didn't even understand. Couldn't get any more magical than that for my taste.

My best memories of the Christmas season were from the times when my parents took us to the Canary Island of Fuerteventura. Not only could we spent the days playing naked on the beach while everyone back home was freezing, but also Christmas itself was very different: We just celebrated it in our small family circle without having to fulfill any grandparents', aunts' and uncles' expectations, no boring church visits, no carols we had to sing, and so on. I was looking forward to Epiphany during those holidays, because that's when the local Spanish kids received their presents delivered by the Three Magi. The Magi would come riding into town on real camels, tossing candies to the children awaiting them in awe and escorted by police cars playing "Feliz Navidad" from their megaphones!

Anyway, ever since I found myself on this magical journey I had rediscovered my interest in the Three Kings and had consecrated a piece of chalk on the last two annual Epiphany days to mark our house's door with the C + M + B initials for protection. Last year I was very excited to find out that Dr. Al Cummins has written a whole book on the Three Magi that also includes some practical chapters about devotional and magical items to make. Of course I had to have it...and gifted the book to myself as a Christmas present. This last Epiphany I found myself working all day on producing Three Kings Oil, Three Kings Chalk, and a protective talisman, as described in Al's book ¹.

The most fascinating item for me covered in the book is a seal from the Folger Manuscript Vb.26 (aka. "Book of Oberon", pg. 372 ²) that features the Three Magi's names and a SATOR square. The original manuscript's talisman description reads: "to be delivered from all fear, and against shot to be further off". In his book Dr. Al proposed it to also be used as a kind of magic circle or plate for objects to be consecrated in the Three Kings names ¹.

Having never heard of a connection between the Three Magi and the SATOR square, I did a bit of research and found some intriguing bits of information: in a group of Byzantine churches from 900 CE in Cappadocia, mural decorations name the shepherds who came to adore the Christ-child as Sator, Arepo, Teneton, in another one Peratoras ³. According to a Byzantine bible of an earlier period ⁴ and also as reported by 16th century philologist Isaac Casaubon, the names Ator, Sator, and Peratoras were supposedly the names of the Three Magi ³.

Of course their alleged names have been many throughout the ages depending on who you asked: Apellus, Amerus, Damascus; Megalath, Galgalath, Saracin; Dionysius, Rusticus, Eleutherius; Enoch, Elijah, Melchidezek; Hôrmîzdah, Îzgarad, Perôzâdh; Bathezora, Melchior, Thaddias; and many more ³. As we know, the ones that have prevailed in the West were: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. Nevertheless I had found a promising connection to the SATOR square.

In his book Dr. Al suggests to draw the seal on a plate in golden colour, which I also considered. But eventually I followed a gut-feeling and decided to draw it on a sheet of Egyptian papyrus instead. Iwas satisfied with the outcome:

The accompanying consecration ritual Dr. Al proposes includes burning three candles with the Magi's names carved into them and sprinkling circles of rue and hyssop around the square ¹. I could not obtain any rue on the days before Epiphany and because I wanted it to be more "Middle Eastern" - to suit the papyrus vibe - I diverged from that, skipped the herbs and candles completely and went "full Egyptian" by burning incense instead: As a representation of the Three Magi I arranged three sticks of incense (Frankincense, Myrrh, Aloeswood) in a triangle formation in a bowl of Natron which I placed in front of a thick white candle, representing the star / Christ. I recited Psalm 72, Matthew 2:1-12, Psalms 51 and 22. The consecration of my Epiphany materia magica went really well and felt quite powerful.

Because it was also New Moon I did my monthly Stele of Jeu operation right after that, but with the slight variation of adding "Hear me and turn away this restraining spirit, in the names of Caspar Melchior and Balthasar" to the exorcism part. I had been a bit wary about even doing the Headless Rite because this New Moon was also a Solar Eclipse and the Sun conjunct Saturn, but after the whole day dedicated to the Three Magi I felt quite protected and empowered enough to do it anyways (the talisman that "delivered from fear"?).

Also, Epiphany coincided with the sun entering the headless / disk-headed Decan Kenmu, - a powerful synchronicity to the Eclipse near the headless south-node Ketu - it felt like the most auspicious headlessness moment, so I felt compelled to do it whatever it takes...also because of a powerful synchronicity that happened a few days before.

Synchronicity

The next day, a jaw-dropping synchronicity sent shivers down my spine when this blog post from the Coptic Magical Papyri research-project popped up in my Facebook feed about an Egyptian papyrus named "P. CtYBR inv. 1792" dated to the 6th or early 7th century CE that features several magical sequences, most promintently a SATOR SQUARE (!!!) in its center and next to that the Coptic names of the THREE MAGI (!!!): Melchior, Thaddias, and Bethezora! Below the magical sequences is written:

"+ Christ was born on the 29th of Khoiak. He came down upon the earth, and he rebuked all of the venomous crawling things. Your word is the lamp of my feet, oh Lord, and the light of my way."

Coincidence or not, I was left with the feeling that this was a confirmation of yesterday's work!

Update: Some months later I re-created the phylactery myself. Here are the instructions:

Use the SATOR and ALPHA-LEŌN magic square on papyrus. Optionally add the Coptic names of the Three Magi and/or the psalms below.

Σ Α Τ Ο Ρ
Α Ρ Ε Π Ο
Τ Ε Ν Ε Τ
Ο Π Ε Ρ Α
Ρ Ο Τ Α Σ

Α Λ Φ Α
Λ Ε Ω Ν
Φ Ω Ν Η
Α Ν Η Ρ

Μελχιωρ, Θαδδιας, Βαθηζωρα

(Melchiōr, Thaddias, Bathēzōra)

Λύχνος τοῖς ποσί μου ὁ νόμος σου καὶ φῶς ταῖς τρίβοις μου

(Psalm 118-105: Your word is the lamp of my feet, oh Lord, and the light of my way)

ἐπὶ ἀσπίδα καὶ βασιλίσκον ἐπιβήσῃ καὶ καταπατήσεις λέοντα καὶ δράκοντα

(Psalm 90-13Thou shalt tread on the asp and basilisk: and thou shalt trample on the lion and dragon)

Prayers to the Three Magi

These prayers are referenced in Dr. Al's book. They first one is a beautiful adoration and the second one a powerful petition. I dug up the originals and translated the second one also into German

Prayer of Epiphany

Latin original: En omnipotens astrorum conditor • Qui incar nationem tuam praeclari sideris testimonio indicasti • Quod uidentes magi oblatis maiestatem tuam muñe ribus adorauerunt • Propterea gratias agendo of feram tibi hostiam laudis ac deprecor concede mihi propitius ut in mea semper mente appareat stella iustitiae • et in tua confessione meus thesaurus sit domine mi iesu christe Amen ⁶

English: O Almighty Creator of the Heavens, who revealed thy incarnation by the testimony of a bright heavenly star, which seeing, the Magi adored thy Majesty with the offering of gifts: in thanksgiving therefore, I offer thee the sacrifice of praise and graciously beseech thee to grant to me that in my mind the star of righteousness may always appear, and that my treasure may be confessing thee, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. ¹

German: Oh allmächtiger Schöpfer des Himmels, der seine Menschwerdung durch das Zeugnis eines hellen himmlischen Sterns offenbarte, dem die Weisen durch Opfergaben Verehrung erwiesen, lasse in meinem Geist immer der Stern der Gerechtigkeit erscheinen und dass mein Schatz dich, Herr Jesus Christus, bekenne. Amen.

Je Vous Requer

Anglo-Norman original: Je vous requer, Jaspar, Melchior, e Baltazar, rois coronez, que Jesum alastes quere quant il fust né de la virge Marie, par icel douçour que vous vers ly ustes quant vous quere ly alastes, e pur cele joye que vous ustes quant ly trovastes e vos douns ly offristes, que vous me consilez de ce dont je vous requer sicome Dieu vous oy e vos offrendres resçust. Verroi Dieu, auxi come lur offrendres reçustes, recevez huy ma oreisoun pur lur amour; e auxi come l’estoille lur apparust en orient, que lur mena a vous al lu qu’il urent grantment desire, auxi, Sire Dieu, aemplez mon desir a leesse e joie. Otreiez moi que je puisse avoir e vere ce que mon cuer desyre, a la loenge Dieu e ma Dame seinte Marie. Amen. ⁷

English translation: I entreat you, Jaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, crowned kings, who went to seek Jesus when he was born of the Virgin Mary, for that sweetness you felt toward him when you went to seek him, and for that joy you felt when you found him and offered him your gifts, that you advise me regarding that which I ask you inasmuch as God hears you and accepted your gifts. True God, as you accepted their gifts, may you accept today my prayer on account of their love; and as the star appeared to them in the east, which led them to you in the place they had so greatly desired, so too, Lord God, you filled my desire for gladness and joy. Grant me that I may have and behold what my heart desires, for the praise of God and my Lady Saint Mary. Amen. ⁷

German translation: Ich flehe Euch an, Caspar, Melchior und Balthasar, gekrönte Könige, die sich zu Jesus begaben, als er von der Jungfrau Maria geboren wurde, bei der Süße, die Ihr ihm gegenüber empfandet, als Ihr ihn aufsuchtet, und bei Eurer Freude, als Ihr ihn fandet und ihm Eure Gaben darbrachtet, mir Rat zu geben hinsichtlich dem, was ich Euch frage, genauso wie Gott Euch anhört und Eure Gaben annahm. Wahrer Gott, wie Du ihre Gaben entgegennahmst, so mögst Du heute mein Gebet ob ihrer Liebe annehmen. Und wie ihnen der Stern im Osten erschien, der sie zu Dir an den Ort führte, nach dem sie sich so sehr sehnten, genau so erfülle mir, Herr Gott, auch mein Verlangen nach Fröhlichkeit und Wonne. Gewähre mir, dass ich bekommen und erblicken werde, was mein Herz begehrt, beim Lob Gottes und meiner heiligen Jungfrau Maria.

Coptic Hymn

This unique Coptic hymn is said during the Paramoun of the Nativity feast. An analysis of the hymn reveals unique characteristics. This hymn is one of the few hymns in the Coptic Church that has no translation. The unique usage of Greek, Bohairic and Sahidic Coptic suggests that the hymn was written in Upper Egypt in Late Sahidic.⁵

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Yestermeje

Coptic: ⲓⲥⲑⲉⲣⲙⲉⲅⲓ ⲁϥⲉⲛⲉ: ⲫⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲟⲥ ⲫⲣⲟⲓ ⲁⲛⲟⲛ: ⲕⲉⲕⲁⲡⲡⲉⲥⲓ ⲉⲫⲏⲗⲉ: ⲇⲉⲩⲇⲉ ⲡⲣⲟⲥⲕⲉⲛⲓⲥⲟⲙⲉⲛ: ⲇⲉⲩⲇⲉ ⲥⲑⲓⲛⲧⲁⲉⲡⲁⲅⲓⲥ.

ⲃⲁⲝⲓⲟ ⲃⲁⲫⲟⲛϩ ⲉⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ: ⲡⲉⲣⲣⲟⲩ ⲉⲧϩⲏⲧ ⲛⲛⲓⲉⲛⲉϩ: ⲉⲛⲓⲫⲩⲗⲏ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ⲙⲡⲕⲁϩⲓ: ⲉⲛⲁⲓ ⲧⲏⲣⲉⲛ ⲧⲉⲛⲟⲩⲱϣⲧ: ⲙⲡⲉⲛⲧⲁⲩⲙⲁⲥϥ ⲉⲧϣⲉⲡⲙⲕⲁϩ.

ⲫⲗⲉⲡⲓ ⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ ⲇⲉ ⲑⲁⲩⲙⲉ: ⲍⲱⲓ ⲛⲉⲛⲓ ⲉⲧⲁⲉⲗⲗⲟⲥⲁ (ⲉⲧⲉⲉⲗⲗⲟⲥⲁ): ⲉⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲧⲁⲥϣⲟⲩⲣⲉ (ⲉⲩⲧⲁⲥϣⲟⲩⲣⲉ): ⲑⲉⲟⲛⲁⲛ ⲙⲙⲟⲛ ⲛⲧⲁⲥ ⲉⲡⲉ: ⲕⲉ ⲛⲛⲁⲕⲝⲁⲥⲓ (ⲛⲛⲁⲕⲝⲱⲥⲓ) ⲁϫⲓⲁ.

ⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ ϫⲟⲩϣⲧ ⲉⲛⲓϣⲫⲏⲣⲓ: ⲉⲫⲟⲛϩ ⲛⲛⲁⲩ ⲉⲧⲁⲩ ϯⲱⲟⲩ: ⲉⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ ⲛⲛⲁⲩⲇⲱⲣⲟⲛ: ⲉⲩϩⲱⲥ ⲙⲫⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲡⲉⲛⲧⲉⲃⲉⲧϫⲫⲟϥ: ⲧϣⲉⲡⲉⲟⲩⲛⲁⲕ ⲡⲉⲧⲉⲛⲧⲟⲩⲁⲓ.

ⲓⲧⲟⲩⲡⲁⲣⲑⲉⲛⲟⲥ ⲧⲉⲕⲁⲩⲥⲁ: ⲕⲉⲏⲑⲏⲟⲩ ⲛⲛⲁⲛⲧⲣⲟⲡⲓⲥ: ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ :ⲉⲟⲥ ⲉⲛⲓⲫⲩⲗⲏ: ⲙⲁⲑⲁⲑⲟⲛ ⲙⲩⲥⲧⲏⲣⲓⲟⲛ: ⲑⲟⲛⲧⲟⲕⲟⲧⲟⲩ ⲉⲙⲙⲁⲛⲟⲩⲏⲗ.

ⲁⲥⲓϯ ⲡⲁⲣⲑⲉⲛⲟⲥ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲁⲥ ⲛϣⲱⲡⲉ: ⲁϥⲟϫ ⲙⲡⲉⲛⲛⲟⲧⲉⲛ ⲧⲉϥⲛⲣⲟⲙⲁ (ⲧⲉϥⲛⲣⲟⲙⲉ): ⲁⲩⲫⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲁϥϣⲁⲛⲟⲩⲟⲛ: ϫⲉ ⲙⲙⲩⲥⲧⲏⲣⲓⲟⲛ: ⲡⲉⲛⲉⲧϣⲡⲱ ⲛⲉⲙⲙⲁⲛⲟⲩⲏⲗ.

ⲛⲁϭⲟⲓⲥ ⲕⲩⲣⲓⲟⲥ ⲕⲉ ⲓⲡⲟⲙⲉⲛⲓ: ⲓⲛⲉ (ⲓⲛⲁ) ⲛⲧⲟⲩ ⲑⲁⲩⲙⲁⲑⲁⲑⲟ: ⲱⲟⲩ ⲙⲫⲟⲟⲩ ⲁⲩⲗⲁⲕⲥⲁⲩⲧⲏⲥ (ⲁⲩⲗⲁⲕⲥⲉⲩⲧⲏⲥ): ⲡⲁⲥⲟⲓ ⲉⲛⲓⲫⲏⲗⲉ ⲧⲉⲥⲧⲏⲥ: ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲛⲙⲁⲕⲁⲣⲓⲍⲟⲙⲉⲛ ⲁⲩⲧⲟⲩ (ⲉⲩⲧⲟⲩ).

ⲃⲣⲡ (ⲃⲱⲣⲡ) ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁⲧⲁ ⲡⲉⲛⲧⲁϥϣⲱⲡⲉ: ⲱϣ ⲙⲙⲟϥⲡⲉ ⲡⲓⲑⲁⲩⲙⲁ: ⲡⲁⲛⲧⲁϥⲱϣ ⲟⲩⲟϩ ⲛqⲏⲧϥ: ⲱⲛⲓⲇⲉⲗⲉ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ⲙⲡⲕⲁϩⲓ: ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲛ ⲙⲁⲕⲁⲣⲓⲍⲓⲛ ⲙⲙⲟⲥ.

ⲣⲉϥⲧⲟⲥ ⲛⲧⲟⲩ ⲁⲁⲣⲟⲛ: ⲥⲉⲛⲧⲟⲩ ⲁⲅⲉⲛⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩ (ⲉⲅⲉⲛⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩ): ⲧⲉⲛⲛⲉⲥⲕⲗⲓⲑⲟⲥ ⲁⲗⲱⲥⲱ (ⲉⲗⲱⲥⲱ): ⲉⲡⲉⲛ ⲧⲟⲛϥⲣⲉⲟⲛ: ⲧⲁⲩⲧⲉ (ⲧⲟⲩⲧⲉ) ⲡⲣⲟⲥ ⲕⲉⲛⲓⲥⲱⲙⲉⲛ.

ⲧϣⲉⲣⲟϥ (ⲧϣⲁⲣⲟϥ) ⲛϩⲁⲛϫⲓϫ ⲛⲁⲁⲣⲟⲛ: ⲟⲩϣⲫⲏⲣⲓ ⲙⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁ ⲛⲁϥⲕⲗⲁⲑⲟⲥ (ⲛⲁϥⲕⲗⲉⲑⲟⲥ): ⲙⲃⲉⲣⲣⲉⲡⲓ ⲣⲉϥϯϩⲟ: ⲧⲉⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ ⲛϩⲉⲃⲣⲓⲟⲥ (ⲛϩⲁⲃⲣⲓⲟⲥ): ⲁⲙⲟⲓ ⲧⲉⲛⲧⲏⲣⲉⲛ ⲛⲧⲉⲛⲟⲩⲱϣⲧ.

ⲫⲟⲥ ⲁⲕϥⲟⲑⲉⲥ ⲉⲛⲓⲧⲉⲗⲉⲛ: ⲕⲉⲣⲁⲛ ⲡⲉⲡⲗⲓⲣⲓⲑⲓⲙⲁ: ⲧⲥⲁⲗⲗⲁⲧⲉⲥ ⲙⲁⲧⲉⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ: ⲟⲩⲉⲡⲟⲩⲧⲉⲛ ⲡⲓⲥⲧⲉⲩⲥⲱⲙⲉⲛ: ϯⲙⲡⲉⲣⲣⲟⲥⲓⲁ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲟⲩⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲩ.

ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲱⲓⲛⲓ ⲉⲃⲟⲗqⲉⲛ ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲱⲓⲛⲓ: ⲁϥⲙⲟϩ ⲧⲏⲣⲉⲛ ⲛⲣⲉϣⲁ: ⲛⲁⲣⲓⲁⲗⲓⲛ ⲱ ⲛⲓⲙⲁⲅⲟⲥ: ⲁⲛⲓⲁⲑⲛⲁϩⲧⲉ ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲛⲛⲉϩⲧⲉ: ⲉⲑⲃⲉ ⲡϫⲓⲛⲓ ⲙⲡⲓⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ.⁵

Coptic Transliteration: isthermegi afene: phasileos phroi anon: kekappesi ephêle: deude proskenisomen: deude sthintaepagis.

baksio baphonh enimagos: perrou ethêt nnieneh: eniphulê têrou mpkahi: enai têren tenouôšt: mpentaumasf etšepmkah.

phlepi magos de thaume: zôi neni etaellosa (eteellosa): enimagos autasšoure (eutasšoure): theonan mmon ntas epe: ke nnakksasi (nnakksôsi) ajia.

nimagos joušt enišphêri: ephonh nnau etau tiôou: enimagos nnaudôron: euhôs mphnouti pentebetjphof: tšepeounak petentouai.

itouparthenos tekausa: keêthêou nnantropis: logos :eos eniphulê: mathathon mustêrion: thontokotou emmanouêl.

asiti parthenos nte pas nšôpe: afoj mpennoten tefnroma (tefnrome): auphnoute afšanouon: je mmustêrion: penetšpô nemmanouêl.

nacois kurios ke ipomeni: ine (ina) ntou thaumathatho: ôou mphoou aulaksautês (aulakseutês): pasoi eniphêle testês: marenmakarizomen autou (eutou).

brp (bôrp) pneumata pentafšôpe: ôš mmofpe pithauma: pantafôš ouoh nqêtf: ônidele têrou mpkahi: maren makarizin mmos.

reftos ntou aaron: sentou agennetou (egennetou): tennesklithos alôsô (elôsô): epen tonfreon: taute (toute) pros kenisômen.

tšerof (tšarof) nhanjij naaron: oušphêri mpneuma nafklathos (nafklethos): mberrepi reftiho: tenimagos nhebrios (nhabrios): amoi tentêren ntenouôšt.

phos akfothes enitelen: keran peplirithima: tsallates matemagos: ouepouten pisteusômen: timperrosia nte ouristou.

piouôini ebolqen piouôini: afmoh têren nreša: narialin ô nimagos: aniathnahte marennehte: ethbe pjini mpiristos.

English Translation: In the summer, the Magi offered the king understanding and worship. Come worship. Come sing strong.

Worthily, the Magi forever changed the hearts of all the tribes of the earth. These, and us all, worship Him who was born and who suffered.

The Magi looked. Truly the Living made the Magi speechless when He became God. There is no reed mat worthy of the holiness.

The Magi saw the signs revealed to them when they glorified. The Magi offered their gifts praising God who was born, who received them and whom we glorify.

And a virgin, (gave birth?) to the Incarnate Word of God. The tribes were instructed of the mystery of the Theotokos of Emmanuel.

The Ancient Being came to the virgin. She gave birth to our Mighty God. God revealed the mystery of Emmanuel that was set in motion

My Lord, the patient Lord, the Physician of wondrous glory - today He lowered himself to the tribes. Come let us bless (Him) with them.

Send the spirit (of the Magi) that came to proclaim Him. And (that) truth that was proclaimed is in Him. All you tribes of the earth, let us bless Him."

The Rod of Aaron (blossomed and gave?) birth (while also?) destroying (the unbelief?) of our hearts. Come, worship.

The censer in Aaron's hands is a spiritual sign. Its new branches are the Hebrew inquirers, the Magi, All of us come to worship.

The Light from Light has filled us all with joy. Sing O Magi. The unbelievers - let them believe because of the Coming of Christ.⁵

Flogging a Dead God

2018-10-23T13:41:00+02:00

Version 2.0 (19/10/2026: update with Egyptian sources on the head, the heart and the serpent after the conclusion)

Version 1.2 (29/10/2018)

In my last article on the Headless Rite I drew some conclusions about its function according to my understanding after several months of practice. I mentioned that I stopped believing in the Headless One being a specific deity or spirit, but that it is the headlessness itself as a symbol that seems to matter as a core aspect of the ritual.

In this article I would like to elaborate on what I meant by that. In addition I want to attempt a deep dive into the powerful symbols found in the ritual and polyphanize the meanings of headlessness, having sight in one's feet and the name of a heart entwined by a serpent.

The Stele of Jeu was written by an Egyptian mage who lived in Roman ruled Thebes that had already witnessed centuries of assimilation and intertwining influences from Greek, Jewish, Persian and other cultures and religions. He lived in a different era and cultural background than us. Obviously he had a different set of symbols than I would intuitively understand as a German occultist from 21st century post-modern Europe. So how can we attempt to unlock the symbols in the PGM?

The other day I had an insight. It was about the Egyptian myth in which Set and Horus were fighting for the throne after Set had killed Osiris. Set gouged out Horus's left eye, which is said to represent the moon, while his right eye is the sun. In one variant of the story the eye was then restored by Thoth. My vision was this: Horus is our mind and his right eye represents clear and rational solar perception and his left eye irrational and intuitive lunar perception. Set took this sense from us. But who is he? Our confusing desires that want full control over our soul? Our fears? In any case, he blinded us in a way where we are forced to rely on the logical analysis of things to not lose control. Here comes Thoth, symbolizing both, intelligence and reason, but also magical enlightenment. With these powers he heals the broken left eye of lunar intuition! It means we can actually regain what we have lost in order to perceive fully.

Let's intelligently apply reasoning and magic to patch over the flawed intuition and to understand the symbols that lie in front of us. But at the same time we need to be cautiously aware of what Schwaller de Lubicz called "mentality of complexity":

Our exoteric evolution, through the Greek metaphysical phases, leading currently to an exclusive rationalism, has given us, owing to the necessity for analysis, a "mentality of complexity" which today prevents us from seeing simply.⁹

How does that work? I found it helpful to rationally analyze the information in front of me while keeping my intuitive faculties open and active and allowing my mind to have free associations, detect patterns and correspondences, evoke emotional reactions and spontaneous ideas.

Let's apply that method to jailbreak the meaning of the Stele of Jeu aka. The Headless Rite. By "reasoning" and "analysis" I mean applying methods of careful comparison of details and learning about the cultural background of the symbols' origin.

Let's start simple and intuitively: just from mere hunch, the symbol of "being without a head" immediately evokes different ideas. In a frightening way it reminds us of the loss of the "ego" or "sense of self", or of losing "control". On the other hand - as known from different methods of meditation and from the Buddhist tradition it can also be something to strive for, to "calm the mind" or "transcend the ego". In magical practice one of the fundamental skills is to overcome the ever analytical mind and reach an altered state of consciousness or mode of trance in order to tap into the powers that lie beyond. Whatever the goal may be called: ayin, samadhi, gnosis, there seems to be a symbol that fits all of them: to become headless.

Headless Rites

Let's compare! This image is such a strong symbol that it can be found everywhere. Throughout human history, spiritual decapitation or full dismemberment have been central to shaman-like initiations around the world. To offered one's head or body to the spirits to be replaced or upgraded to a new divine one with more magical powers. Following are a few examples found in Mircea Eliade's tome on "Shamanism".

(Note: I am using the term 'shaman' in this article, fully aware of the controversy around it. I am not claiming that Siberian shamans are the same as 'medicine men' from Borneo or Tibetan Buddhist monks. I use it to describe the conceptualization of trance-like states of consciousness as means of initiation among differenct cultural practices that can be described as "shaman-like".)

According to North Siberian Yakut shamanhood, spirits carry the initiate's soul to the underworld and imprison it in a house for three years. They behead him, and set aside the head, so the initiate is forced to watch his dismemberment with his own eyes. Them they cut him into small pieces, which are then distributed to the spirits of the various diseases to empower him with the ability to cure.¹

The blacksmith then [...] forged his head and taught him how to read the letters that are inside it. He changed his eyes; and that is why, when he shamanizes, he does not see with his bodily eyes but with these mystical eyes. He pierced his ears, making him able to understand the language of plants. Then the candidate found himself on the summit of a mountain, and finally he woke in the yurt, among his family. Now he can sing and shamanize indefinitely, without ever growing tired.¹

Among the Dyak of Borneo shaman-like initiation requires three different ceremonies. In the second one, the initiated elders take the neophyte to a room shut off by curtains...

And there, as they assert, they cut his head open, take out his brains, wash and restore them, to give him a clear mind to penetrate into the mysteries of evil spirits, and the intricacies of disease; they insert gold dust into his eyes to give him keenness and strength of sight powerful enough to see the soul wherever it may have wandered; they plant barbed hooks on the tips of his fingers to enable him to seize the soul and hold it fast; and lastly they pierce his heart with an arrow to make him tender-hearted, and full of sympathy with the sick and suffering.¹⁰

About the Tibetan Tantric chöd rite ethnologist R. Bleichsteiner wrote in his book "The Yellow Church":

To the sound of the drum made of human skulls and of the thighbone trumpet, the dance is begun and the spirits are invited to come and feast. The power of meditation evokes a goddess brandishing a naked sword; she springs at the head of the sacrificer, decapitates him, and hacks him to pieces; then the demons and wild beasts rush on the still quivering fragments, eat the flesh, and drink the blood.¹¹

Also in the initiatory cult of Mithraism, the symbolic headlessness played an important role:

The degree of solider (Miles) was given to those who taken up the spiritual battle against the ego (nafs), the struggle with lower self. During the rite the neophyte is crowned while in bondage of the material world, he is given the kingdom of this world, but he rejects the crown and once his binds were cut, he removes the crown saying: "Mithra is my only crown". The removing of crown also symbolises an attempt to remove the head (intellect) itself, allowing Mithra to be the guide [...]¹²

Becoming Osiris

So, how does all relate to our "Headless One"? Do ancient forms of "shamanhood" have anything to do with the complex metaphysical universe of Ancient Egypt or the spiritual melting pot of Alexandria that birthed the type of ritual practice described in the PGM? To me it does, and apparently some people that - unlike me - are scholarly educated in these topics have also drawn parallels between "shamanic" initiation and Ancient Egyptian religious practice or at least pointed to traces of the former in the latter.

German Egyptologist Sabine Neureiter published a paper with the thesis that "shamanic" practices from Neolithic times must have survived into the collective memory of Pharaonic Egypt. Clear traces can be found in the Egyptian cosmology of a threefold world (heavens/earth/netherworld), the prominent death cult (mummification and resurrection), and many of the texts on magic and medicine.

The philosopher Jeremy Naydler, who specializes in the religious life of ancient cultures, wrote several books on the "shamanic" mysteries that can be found in the pyramid- and the coffin-texts. His works predate Neureiter's paper so they obviously don't feature her research but his conclusions are the same.

Since he features as a main character in our ritual, let's take a look at Osiris. He was the primeval fertility god, killed and dismembered by his brother Set, resurrected by his sister and consort, Isis, and became father of the eternal god-king Horus. He symbolized death and rebirth - of the land and its inhabitants, on a material and spiritual level. His myth is the core of all of Egypt's metaphysics. Egyptian gods were not inconceivable and distant deities that required to be worshipped and appeased. They rather represented archetype-like divine principles - "states of soul" - that humans pass through.

Perhaps the classic example of human identification with divinity in ancient Egypt is the way in which people became united with the god Osiris. This was a pious wish in New Kingdom Egypt, for all who passed over to the otherworld. Osiris was the god who died in this life to be born anew in the otherworld. It was a pious wish, but it was also a necessity if one was to undergo the transformational experiences involved. And so we often see people portrayed as Osiris, and we read their names in The Book of the Dead conjoined to that of Osiris. This same Osiris, it should be said, governed the cycles of death and regeneration throughout the natural world.¹³

[Osiris] presides over and facilitates this rite of passage from one mode of existence or awareness to another. As "an Osiris", a person is able to enter into and come out of the otherworld. Their consciousness is liberated from the limitations that normally restrict it in this life.¹³

The framework of the Stele of Jeu ritual is built around the Osiris myth. He is invoke by his name as "Osor-Onnophris" and in his role of an ancient creator god, but he is also called "headless one", thus invoked in his dismembered, magical, "shamanic" state.

It was part of the fate of Osiris to be dismembered, and this included his decapitation. Decapitation should be understood as an essential phase in the Osirian process that led to the revirilization and "solar resurrection" of both the god and the king.¹⁴

[...] the condition of headlessness and the restoration of the head were important initiatory experiences within the Egyptian Sed festival "secret rites". This is not to suggest that Niuserre was literally undergoing a shamanic initiation, but rather that the initiatory experiences he was undergoing have clear shamanic parallels. The text describing Niuserre’s “secret rites” indicates that the restoration of his head corresponds to his rebirth as a god, that is to his rebirth as one who—like a shaman—is as much at home in the spirit world as in the world of the living.¹⁵

Dismemberment of the Symbolic Body

The symbolic attitude of ancient knowledge cultivated the intellect to the extent of perceiving all of the phenomena of nature itself as a symbolic writing revealing the forces and laws governing the energetic and even spiritual aspects of our universe.¹⁶

To the symbolic mindset of the Egyptians, every single subject and object had a meaning but was also made up of smaller things that had meaning by themselves. This was especially the case with the human body:

Just as the gods were present in the landscape — in desert, river, plant, and animal — so they could become present in the members of the human psychophysical organism, in hair, face, eyes, and hands. By drawing the gods in, in this way, a greater sense of self-integration was achieved. The degree to which people could claim their inner experiences as their own was necessarily compromised, and this meant that the overall experience of unitary self-consciousness was far more attenuated and fragile than it is today. In the process of initiation it was broken down altogether in order to rebuild it more strongly. The important initiatory idea of physical dismemberment becomes comprehensible when it is seen as the only way of describing the experience of catastrophic psychic fragmentation. To a consciousness for which the parts of the body were all psychically charged, the mutilation of the body undergone by Osiris was the prototype of psychic fragmentation that must have been experienced by the initiate in a psychophysical way. This psychic fragmentation was precipitated as a prelude to the initiates reidentifying with a new psychic centre that transcended the “distributed psyche.” The reintegration of the body must have involved coming to a new relationship with one’s “members,” a relationship in which “possession” of the parts by the person was frequently emphasized:

You have your heart, O Osiris;
You have your legs, O Osiris;
You have your arms, O Osiris;
So too my heart is my own;
My legs are my own;
My arms are my own.
A stairway to the sky is set up for me
That I may ascend on it to the sky;
I ascend on the smoke of the great censing.¹⁷

What is the Head?

(Update 2026: more on what the Egyptians thought the head was, after the conclusion)

Besides its importance in "shamanic" and Egyptian initiation, we need to dive a bit deeper into what "the head" actually meant symbolically to the Egyptians in order to fully unlock the symbol of headlessness:

Of all the parts of the body, it was the head that seems to have corresponded most to the whole person as an individualized being. Hieroglyphically the head shown on its own could represent the whole person (or equally the whole god or animal). The legend that the head of Osiris was buried at Abydos was one and the same with the claim of Abydos to be the burial place of the whole god. Since the head bears our individual facial features, it most naturally symbolized the whole person and was—of all parts of the body—least prone to being invested with the kind of psychic autonomy that we find attributed to other members or organs. It is significant that the ancient Egyptians represented the ba (the soul of a person freed from the body) as a bird with a human head. The head would have the individualized features of the person to whom the ba belongs.⁴

In the Greek original the headless one was called Akephalos. It has been argued whether the Greek word for head κεφαλή (kephalé) might also mean "source" or "origin" in certain contexts, especially in the translation of parts of the New Testament from Greek sources. Regarding the "Stele of Jeu" this also must have been a question, because we are left with the famous "Bornless One" Mathers and Crowley had used in their versions of the ritual ("Liber Samekh"). I am quite certain that κεφαλή means "head" in this context, first because that's the literal meaning and second, because we are talking about a god and a demon - a person - so it just seems way more obvious that akephalos refers to person without head, not a person without origin. But nevertheless, I know it's Greek but the Egyptians loved puns and double meanings in magical formulas, so keep this other meaning in mind as well - it may help to fully grasp the ritual.

Egyptian and Jewish Gods

What does a headless god represent outside the context of the meaning-heavy myth of Osiris? What is left of Osiris without his individualized features, without his ba? The simplest way to understand this is actually part of the text: "you are Osor-onnophris whom none has ever seen". The Egyptian God-king Osiris is turned into an "invisible god" and given more names: Iabas and Iapôs, which are allegedly Samaritian enunciations of "the One" god the Jews called YHVH.

I have read claims that the author(s) of the PGM wanted to "spice up" their spells with some foreign sounding voces magicae and concepts from new and "exotic" esoteric sources and appropriated Jewish magic and religious ideas into their spells. But to be honest, that sounds like a quite lazy explanation and I am sure there is much more to it.

In "Future of the Ancient World" Jeremy Naydler wrote an excellent chapter on the fundamental difference between Jewish and Greco-Egyptian metaphysics:

in ancient Egyptian spiritual life there existed two levels of self-consciousness. On the more “mundane” level, people experienced their psychological processes as originating from, and as tied up with, the activity of the gods. They would thus identify their psychological processes less as their own and more as arising from the gods, with whom they felt the necessity to relate themselves. Beyond this, at a higher level, there existed the possibility of mastering the gods and achieving an experience of union with the divine creative source from whom all the gods derived their power. But in order to achieve such a union with Ra, or Atum-Ra—“to look upon his face” as the Book of the Dead expresses it—a person had to come to experience the polycentric consciousness as involving an inner fragmentation or dismemberment of the soul. This “Osiris” experience was the necessary prelude to the reconstitution of the soul about a single divine center.¹⁸

For the Israelite, by contrast, at the level of ordinary awareness, the activity of the gods was constantly negated in the psyche. The soul was no longer an arena in which the gods were seen as actively giving rise to psychic events. Whatever occurred therein was ultimately to be claimed by a person as belonging to him or herself alone. At the same time, the “liberated” personality referred more and more to moral and legal exhortations and prohibitions as a way of maintaining a relationship to the divine, now conceived as the One God Yahweh. But unlike Ra, Yahweh was not a god that any human being could become identified with, in the sense that the ancient Egyptian initiate might identify with Ra. Yahweh was a god unlike any other god in that it was not possible to become united with him. Except for the prophets through whom Yahweh spoke, no Israelite would dare to say “I am Yahweh” as an ancient Egyptian—in an exalted state of consciousness—might say, “I am Ra.” And yet Yahweh’s absence was curiously and uniquely present in the still depths of the human soul, demanding an allegiance, which was to be forged in a specifically moral way.
[...] It is a new voice that can be heard coming out of Israel. It is as if the god of the Israelites had in some uncertain way made common ground with what was noblest in the human spirit. And this god, despite his forbidding persona, was at the same time felt to be a “personal God.” He was both far away yet also strangely close to hand. And it is this closeness, this intimacy of Yahw*eh and the human spirit, that distinguishes the Israelite from the ancient Egyptian (or Mesopotamian or Canaanite) relationship to the divine.¹⁸

Judaism did not reject the possibility of "union with God," so much as it feared and cautioned against the potentially devastating consequences of such an encounter on the functioning ego.

Then God spoke all these words [and] . . . all the people shook with fear at the peals of thunder and the lightening flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the smoking mountain [i.e., their face-to-face encounter with Yahweh]; and they kept their distance. 'Speak to us yourself,' they said to Moses, 'and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we shall die' . . . So the people kept their distance while Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.
-- (Exodus 20:18-21)

Applied Systasis

Besides the Jews who saw such an idea as a strictly forbidden heresy and the (Neo-)Platonists who strived for experience of union with "the One" through an ecstatic ascent from the physical realm, there was also another strange sect in town whose followers had been secretly obsessing about this exact topic: the Gnostics!

In "Abrasax II" Merkelbach and Totti already acknowledged that it was probably no coincidence the ritual was called "Stele of Jeu" - in analogy to a contemporary work of magical technology among Gnostic initiates called the "Books of Jeu"². These were a complex and very technical collection of chapters in which Jesus teaches the apostles how to "crucify the world", which saves from the archons of this aeon, and about bringing the word of the Father down to earth and raising the minds of men to heaven. This is accompanied by endless numbers of magical launch code sequences, secret names, sigils and diagrams of the path up through god's emanations to the godhead.

Keeping all of these discussed points in mind, it seems to me that the Stele of Jeu tries to attempt no less than applying the well practiced Pagan magical technology of "Systasis" (union and identification with a god) to the distant and ineffable, yet personal Jewish god-form of YHVH!

In the beginning of the ritual he is addressed as Osiris, but headless: As an incomprehensible god without individualized features, as a creator god who from an Egyptian point of view exists in the magical state beyond inner fragmentation or dismemberment, reconstituted with a single, divine soul. Here the other meaning of "head" as "source" also fits: a god without a source, a self begotten, primordial one. In the following step it becomes more clear as one identifies as Moses in his role as an initiated prophet who has experienced direct contact with Yahweh, who had been chosen to mediate between human and divine. This role is associated to being a "messenger of the Pharaoh Osor-onnophis". It seems like Osiris serves as proxy gateway to reach the godhead.

As I have already laid out in "Towards the Godhead" in my Akephalos Redux article, what follows next in the ladder of ascent are potent calls to the supreme god using magical barbarous names, and a process of cleansing and purification through self-exorcism of restraining demons. Eventually one reaches the highest level of abstraction where words are transcended beyond vibrations of the seven divine vowels to the level of pure resonance, the unified field of consciousness.

See? The Headless One is actually a quite approachable archetypical symbol if we allow our immediate intuitive ideas to roam freely and try to match them with historical and anthropological data!

More Symbols

The central part of the Stele of Jeu ritual comes after the adoration of the headless god and purification of the self. The ritualist identifies with being a "a headless daimon" with sight in his feet and a flaming mouth and bearing the name of "a heart girt with a serpent". In the same way we looked at the meaning of "head" through the lens of Egyptian symbolism to unlock the meaning of "headlessness", let's do the same about the other quite powerful images in the ritual:

Sight in the Feet

Much has been speculated about the peculiar phrase "I am a headless daimon with sight in my feet". As already mentioned in my article Preisendanz' Headless God Armand L. Delatte identified the headless demon with the god Bes and referred to some depictions of that deity with serpent- or jackal-heads, but Karl Preisendanz found this insufficient and argued that instead it could refer to a practice that could be found on images of beheaded captives in Egypt who had their heads between their feet. He backed his argument by referring to the Egyptian custom of Akroteriasmos, the dismemberment of a body before embalmment and mummification where the head is usually put between the feet to make it impossible for the dead to wake up and pick it up again. In his Typhonian interpretation of the "Headless One" Jake Stratton Kent sees in this expression a reference to a form of priestly foot-wear bearing an Anubis head on the upper part of the foot.

The data is already contradicting enough, so why not throw in another interesting information to make it even more complicated: the Greek word for "sight", ὄρασιν (horasis) also seems to be the name of a bird appearing in a Hellenistic Greek version of a legend about the Egyptian goddess Tefnut's quarrel with her father, the sun god Re, which led to her departing from Egypt to Ethiopia in the form of a cat. Horasis here is probably the Greek form of the name of an Egyptian deity who, portrayed as a bird, symbolised good sight. (pBritMus 274, fr. 9a, col VI, l. 7).³ So, there could also be the possibility that "Horasis next to my feet" refers to Isis or Nephthys who in their form of two birds guard the dead Osiris.

Besides speculation there is no way to find the answer from the data we have, so let's look at the original text and try a more direct and simple way:

The whole phrase "headless god with sight in the feet" and some of the following lines of this divine self-description in the Stele of Jeu appears as a much longer, second person address with minor variations in three other Magical Papyri. In PGM VII 222ff and PGM VIII 64ff, as well as pOxy XXXVI 2753, fr. E, D, C (aka. Betz PGM CII 1ff):

I call upon you, the headless god, having your face beside your feet, the one who hurls lightning and thunders; you are the one whose mouth is continually full of fire, the one placed over Necessity. I call upon you, the god placed over Necessity, Iaeō Sabaōth Adōnai Zabarbathiaō; you are the one lying on a coffin of myrrh, having resin and asphalt as an elbow cushion. You arc not a daimon, but the blood of the two falcons by the head of Osiris, chattering and keeping watch.
(PGM VIII 64ff)¹⁹

I suspect that "headless daimon with sight in the feet" might just have been a commonly used epithet of Osiris in magical spells and the reason to use it in the Stele of Jeu was because of the obviously corresponding symbolic connection of headless Osiris with the invisible god. It is interesting that in the Stele of Jeu many parts of the invocation are omitted. Especially because the omitted parts are the ones that identify the invoked god more clearly as Osiris than the parts that were adopted. To me this is another hint that in the Stele of Jeu Osiris serves as a proxy god deprived of all his individualized features to represent the invisible god of the Jews.

Nevertheless I looked into the symbolic meaning of "feet" to the Egyptians. Unfortunately I could not find anything specifically Egypt related, but I dug up an interesting text on the symbolic meaning of hands and feet from rock art to the Quran in North Africa and Arabia that proved to be quite useful.

Associated with the ancient stone cult of Arabia and North Africa, the foot and the hand became the mark of the Creator. Feet and sandals engraved on rocks, said Cervicek (1986, 96), represented the “striding of the deity” and marked the sacredness of the place. Nowhere is the spirituality of rocks and footprints as dramatically illustrated as in the recently-excavated temple of Ain Dara, Syria. There, two giant footprints, each three feet long, were delicately carved in the limestone slabs covering the temple portico. A single left footprint is carved on an adjoining slab at the threshold of the antechamber, while a single right footprint is carved on the threshold from the antechamber to the main hall. A prototype of a Canaanite temple, with feet proceeding through its three sections towards the “holy of holy,”²⁰

The text also reveals that sandals signified sovereign power and regal potency in Egypt and that for example in Egyptian wedding ceremonies sandals were exchanged: the father gave the groom his daughter's sandal to indicate that she was now under the groom's care. Also sandals were used as offerings to the dead. In all these cases the sandals are symbols themselves: of the feet of the owner.

Besides transmitted knowledge through rock art and lore from the past, the language itself has some great hints about the underlying symbolism as we can see here:

Thanks to the generous pliancy of the Arabic language, with a small phonemic shift, a lowly word such as qdm ("foot") is transmuted through the semantic canopies of this language into Muqaddam, one of the ninetynine Most Beautiful Names of Allah. [...] Another small phonetic shift and qidam "eternity" is born. And what an awesome word! So significant is this kindred term of the foot that it forms the ontological core of the Divine transcendence in Islam.²¹

If we carefully put the puzzle pieces together we can conclude that feet probably symbolize the manifestation of influence and authority on earth ("footprint"). Feet of a deity manifest the divine will and power on earth. What has been "imprinted" is established for eternity.

From the feet let's go to the eyes to unlock the meaning of "sight":

Intuitively I can think of a few meanings of "eyes": they are often used synonymous to "the soul" or windows to and from the soul. In Alchemy, the eye is a commonly used symbol. It usually represents a desire to hold to a vision for the future. The eye is also commonly a symbol of 'keeping an eye' on that which is important.

In Ancient Egypt the eye was probably one of the most complicated symbols. There are several myths featuring storylines around eyes (Wadjet, Eye of Re, Eye of Horus, etc.) and to cover all of them would probably easily fill a whole book. Fortunately Wim van den Dungen from Sofiatopia already did all the work for us about the meaning of Eyes in Egyptian mythology, so I will quote from his page:

To grasp the meaning of the Eye, two registers can be invoked. However, in Egyptian pre-rational thought, these levels are often confused, whereas there is a semantic bridge between both registers:

the Eye is a cosmogonic goddess, symbol of reunification and divine kingship : this is the Single Eye of the Supreme, Self-created High God of before creation, namely Atum. This Eye is also called the "Eye of Re" and the "Eye of Horus" (the Elder), associated with the right hand side, the summer and the Sun. Its mythical activity (like that of the autocreation of Atum and the family drama of Osiris) took place in the "first time", the so-called "zep tepy" ("zp tpy") or "Urzeit".

the Eye is an anthropological symbol of restoration and popular wellness : this is the Restored Eye of Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, the "Wedjat" ("wDAt" : hale or uninjured), associated with the left hand side, the winter and the Moon. Because Thoth played an important role in its myth, it is also called the "Eye of Thoth".

I also found some paragraphs in Jeremy Naydler's books that are even a bit more on point:

The eye, as source of vision, was also source of inner strength. It was here that a person’s courage, or lack of it, resided. [...] For the ancient Egyptians, the eye had both psychic and magical properties, which meant that reference to the eye was reference to specific attributes that the eye intrinsically possessed. The fact that human beings have eyes meant that the properties attributed to the eye could then be utilized by human beings. But the eye was regarded as an entity in its own right, existing virtually as an independent spiritual archetype. As such, it was personified as the sacred wedjat eye, a potent symbol or divine creative and destructive power that was often employed in a protective capacity in ancient Egyptian religious art. It is sometimes depicted winged or, with an arm so as to emphasize its independent status.⁴

mythologically the Eye of Horus is torn out by Seth in their battle for supremacy over Egypt. This act plunges the night sky into darkness, for the Eye of Horus, cosmically understood, is the moon—the heavenly body that illumines the night. It is Thoth who finds the eye shattered into fragments and, having reassembled them, causes the moon to reappear after its short period of invisibility. In so doing, Thoth restores harmony and wholeness both macrocosmically and microcosmically.21 On the microcosmic level the restoration of the eye signifies the consolidation of spiritual power in the king.²²

So, boiling them all down to a generalized definition: to the Egyptians the eye symbolized a focused spiritual vision and a divine power that unifies and heals whatever it sees divided and injured.

Given that the Greek term Horasis in the original text means "sight" or "vision" and does not refer to a bird, if we combine the meaning of the eyes and the feet, having "sight in ones feet" could be symbolically jailbroken to mean: manifesting the divine will with a clear and healing spiritual vision on earth and establishing it for eternity.

Bam!!

The Heart Girt With a Serpent

(Update 2026: more on the heart and the serpent from Egyptian sources, after the conclusion)

At the end of the Stele of Jeu the ritualist proclaims that his name is a "heart girt with a serpent" - a very powerful image! Let's break it down.

My spontaneous ideas about the heart are: unconditional love and affection, intuition and emotions, the sacred, irrational but fundamental knowledge...

How did the Egyptians conceptualize the heart?

Physically higher than the belly, the heart was also psychologically higher. It was regarded as the spiritual centre of a person, the place where a person would come closest to his or her ka (or vital spirit).⁴

But the heart was also a place of reflection, of contemplation, of memory, and of intention, a "listening place" where one might come to a deeper level of understanding of, and harmony with, life (maat). The true wishes of the heart are mediated by reflection and attuned to maat, unlike the impulses stemming from the belly.⁴

For, as the organ in the body most associated with the spiritual self, the heart was essentially pure. It was therefore considered necessary to protect the heart from corrupting influences or tendencies. We thus find admonitions to “conceal” or to “seal” the heart. This idea of the essential purity of the heart is linked to that of the heart as the source of a person’s being. [...] The heart, then, was a part of oneself that ultimately could not be identified with any of the desires, decisions, or actions that were out of tune with maat. The heart was the incorruptible core of a person, and thus detached enough from all that was mundane in them to stand as witness against them.⁴

So, in contrast to the head symbolizing the individualized ego of a person, the heart symbolized the incorruptible spiritual core and links the human back to the celestial gods.

For the condition of soul that Horus represents is that of Osiris reborn, and equally of Ra grounded - in other words the celestial self that has become incarnate. Horus, to the ancient Egyptians, was the earthly image of Ra: the radiant source of light physically embodied. And the place where Horus came to reside in the initiate’s psychophysical organism was the heart.²³

As below, so above - so what is the incorruptible spiritual core of a god? In his role as the creator-god, Ptah Tatenen, it is said that he is the father of the gods:

Tatenen, the oldest of them all.
He gave birth to himself by himself
before any becoming became.
And when his becoming became,
he made the world
from the thoughts in his heart²⁴

We can conclude that in the context of our ritual the heart might represent the incorruptible core of creative power and love of the godhead. But why is it entwined by a serpent?

My immediate associations with serpents are "dragons", "primeval kingship" and "unpredictable danger", as well as ideas that come from my Christian cultural background: sin and deception. In contrast, there are serpents aplenty in Egyptian symbolism, as they were also part of everyday life in the area. So, of course my own associations are useless for analysis.

In order to understand what the core symbolic meaning of serpents in Egypt were, is it helps to take a look at one of the Egyptian myths of cosmogenesis: the birth of the primeval god Atum:

In the Beginning, there exists only Nun, the dark and abyssal waters that stretch everywhere to infinity. There is no distinction of any one form from another within this primordial ocean; there is only a pervasive formlessness that amounts to nothingness, as all things merge together in this great sea of Nun. One has to imagine a quality of existence that is prior to space and time, up and down, before and after. Nothing lies outside anything else, for everything is intrinsic to every other thing; hence, there are no separate things. Here there is a primordial unity, of which it is impossible to speak save in terms of negatives. And yet the image of water conveys the positive notion of Nun as the source of life. Nun, though nothing in itself, nevertheless contains everything that is to be. Nun is the whole diverse and varied universe existing in a state of potentiality.
This primordial condition to which the name of Nun is given was sometimes pictured as a great serpent. But already, the image of the serpent of many coils must be seen as a first manifestation of something from out of the ocean of potentiality. This serpent is called Nehebkau, which means “Provider of Life-Energies.” In the Pyramid Texts, Nehebkau says:
I am the Outflow of the Primeval Flood [Nun],
the one who emerges from the waters.
I am Nehebkau, the serpent of many coils.
Nehebkau has a similar ambivalence to Nun, in that the snake’s coils both entrap the life energies of all existence in a state of unrealized potentiality, and at the same time provide a secure home, a protective embrace from which these life energies can flow forth. Within the coils of the serpent, and also swimming within the waters of Nun, resides a creative principle that is the spark of life; it alone can release the life-energies held in potential within Nun.²⁵

The serpent was thought of as having the most primeval of forms, and hence was the creature closest to the conditions that prevailed in the beginning of time. The eight famous ancient Egyptian primeval gods - or "Ogdoad" - were named after the different qualities of the unmanifest: formlessness, or chaos, darkness, or obscurity, unendingness, or limitlessness, and the hidden, or unmanifest. They were depicted as four serpents and four frogs.

Also the Egyptian Decans, deities residing in asterisms that rule over fate (like our Zodiac signs) were often depicted as serpents, sometimes winged or with arms and legs. They were considered unpredictable, potentially dangerous or benevolent.

I think we can make a quite safe statement that the coiled up serpent symbolized "ultimate potentiality".

The "heart girt with a serpent" also bears a striking analogy to the Orphic "cosmic egg", a powerful alchemical symbol that Frater Acher analyzed quite well in his latest book "Holy Daimon":

Phanes, the Orphic primeval deity of new life hatched from an egg with a serpent wound about it, has been called the ‘Revealer’; and indeed new wisdom awaits us by learning more about this mystical image. [...] let’s take a moment to meditate on the body of the serpent. Can you see the polarity here? The painful and deeply personal dilemma of the snake? At every moment the serpent has to make a decision. Should it continue to incubate the egg with the warmth of its coiled body, or should it tighten its muscles just a little more and break its fragile shell? The snake’s immediate desire is to break it: serpents love devouring fresh eggs. Yet it can choose to resist this desire, even though this means resisting its every instinct. Instead of breaking the egg, it can choose to turn its body into a tool of generation and creation.²⁶

Having unlocked the meaning of "heart" and "serpent" the god-name in the Stele of Jeu is a very powerful one: the incorruptible core of creative power of the godhead in a state of ultimate potentiality.

Although we should to be very careful with comparisons between fundamentally different cultures, I can't stop seeing the striking similarities of the symbology we unlocked with the Kundalini serpent from Tantric Hinduism:

the Shakti coiled round Shiva, making one point (Bindu) with it, is Kundalini Shakti. This word comes from the word Kundala or "a coil", "a bangle". She is spoken of as coiled, because She is likened to a serpent (Bhujangi), which, when resting and sleeping, lies coiled; and because the nature of Her power is spiraline, manifesting itself as such in the worlds — the spheroids or "eggs of Brahma" (Brahmanda), and in their circular or revolving orbits and in other ways. [...] In other words, this Kundali Shakti is that which, when it moves to manifest itself, appears at the universe. To say that it is "coiled" is to say that it is at rest—that is, in the form of static potential energy. This Shakti coiled round the Supreme Shiva is called Mahakundall ("The great coiled power"), to distinguish it from the same power which exists in individual bodies, and which is called Kundalini.
Kundali Shakti in individual bodies is power at rest, or the static centre round which every from of existence as moving power revolves. In the universe there is always in and behind every form of activity a static background. The one Consciousness is polarized into static (Shiva) and kinetic (Shakti) aspects for the purpose of "creation". This Yoga is the resolution of this duality into unity again.²⁷

Resurrection

Gluing all the dismembered and thoroughly studied pieces back together we end up with this potent meaning of the ritual's core lines:

I am an unperceivable daimon with a single, divine soul. From my incorruptible divine core and with unpredictable potentiality I manifest my will with a clear spiritual vision with every single step securing it for eternity.

It's quite deep, but far from the poetic formulation of the original symbols, right? That's the magic of symbolic language.

Conclusion

The Stele of Jeu is a quite universal spell and the involved headlessness enables boundless possibilities: stripping away the individual features from the god puts him in the magical state of unlimited potentiality: If you want the Headless One to be Osiris/Typhon/Bes/YHVH/Ketu/..., he becomes Osiris/Typhon/Bes/YHVH/Ketu/... A headless god stripped of individualization seems to become whatever head is being put upon him through the intent of the performer. In my experimental performance of the rite to conquer Shai-Hulud I became the Headless Serpent Wrangler.

Update 2026: What the Egyptians Said

When I wrote this article I went from intuition to Naydler and back. Eight years on, with the Egyptian texts themselves in translation, most of the 2018 readings hold, and some get much sharper.

The head

The head, as Naydler says above, stood for the whole person as an individual: the face, the features others recognise, and the ba that travels after death has a human head. It was also where the senses are and where speech comes from. The Opening of the Mouth ritual worked on the face, and its aim was "to endow the statue with a soul and to quicken it"⁵. Its instrument was made of "the iron which issued from Seth"⁶: the force that took the head off is the one that gives it back.

To lose the head was to be unrecognisable, deaf and mute, dead and scattered. To get it back was resurrection. Chapter 43 of the Book of the Dead is titled "To retain one's head":

Formula for not letting the head of N be cut off in the necropolis.
[...]
To whom his head was given after having been cut off.
The head of Osiris shall not be taken from him,
My head shall not be taken from me!
I am risen, renewed, refreshed,
I am Osiris!²⁸

The heart

In 2018 I called the heart the incorruptible core. The Egyptians would have said more: it was where you thought. For them "the heart was the seat of emotions and knowledge"⁵. When the embalmers drew the brain out "through the nostrils"⁷, they threw it away; the heart stayed in the body, because it would be weighed before Osiris. A headless god whose name is a heart hasn't lost his mind. It was never in his head.

The heart is also the record of everything one did, and it can speak against you. In the Book of the Dead the dead plead with it:

O my heart of my mother,
O my heart of my mother,
O my heart of my being!
Do not rise up against me as witness,
Do not oppose me in the tribunal,
Do not rebel against me before the guardian of the scales!²⁸

The serpent

My 2018 reading of the coiled serpent as "ultimate potentiality" holds, and the Book of the Dead takes it further. In chapter 175 the creator says that when the earth returns to the primeval flood, "I shall remain with Osiris after I have transformed myself into another snake which men do not know and the gods do not see". Hornung: only the creator and Osiris "can change back into the enduring, original form of a snake", the form also visible in the Ouroboros, "the regenerating nonexistence that encircles the world"⁸. The serpent is what is before the world and what remains after it, and it is unseen, like the god "whom none has ever seen".

The same coiled form is also Apophis, the dissolution itself, and Nehebkau's coils, as Naydler says above, both trap the life energies and shelter them. A coil can hold or crush.

So a heart girt with a serpent reads, in Egyptian terms: what you have done, held inside what is not yet and what is no longer.

And one guess, which is mine and nothing more: in Egypt a name written inside a ring is a king's name, the cartouche. "My name is a heart girt with a serpent" sounds a little like a royal name in its loop.

If you made it all the way to down here, congratulations and thank you! This post may have been a bit confusing as it is actually three articles crammed together into one, covering the topics of a technique for intuitive analysis of symbols, sam-blocking the meaning of The Headless One, and analyzing other powerful symbols in this spell. I decided to keep them all together because in this way it reflects my flow of consciousness while researching. I know of at least one regular reader who told me a main reason they like my blog is that it reflects my thought process, so I'll keep it that way.

What? I forgot something? Ah you mean the symbolic meaning of "having a flaming mouth"? Well, consider that homework! ;)

Thanks to Ricardo for valuable feedback and to Aaron for motivation and to the spirits of Düsseldorf for reassurance and inspiration.

on the terms of "sam-blocking" and "polyphanizing":

Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask, with a foreword by Wendy Doniger (2004). p. 42. ↩↩
Merkelbach R., Totti M. (1991) Eine Selbstoffenbarung des Obersten Gottes. In: Merkelbach R., Totti M. (eds) Abrasax. Papyrologica Coloniensia, vol 17/2. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. ↩
Arnott, W. Geoffrey. Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z. Routledge, 2007. ↩
Naydler, Temple of the Cosmos. Chapter 8: The Soul Incarnate. Body and Soul. ↩↩↩↩↩
Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 2001). ↩↩
Pyramid Texts, utterance 21, after Edward P. Butler, "Seth", Henadology. ↩
Herodotus, Histories 2.86, trans. G. C. Macaulay. ↩
Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 162–163. ↩
De Lubicz, R. A. Schwaller. Symbol and the Symbolic: Ancient Egypt, Science, and the Evolution of Consciousness. Aware Journalism, 1981. p. 82. ↩
H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, I, 280–81 (found in Eliade, Shamanism). ↩
Bleichsteiner, Robert. L'église jaune. Payot, 1937. p. 222 (found in Eliade, Shamanism). ↩
The Cult of Mithras - An Ancient Rite ↩
Naydler, Jeremy. The Future of the Ancient World: Essays on the History of Consciousness. Simon and Schuster, 2009. Chapter 6: Gods and Humans. ↩↩
Naydler, Jeremy. Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt. Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Kindle Edition. The West Wall (Utts. 254–60). Utt. 254. ↩
Naydler, Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts. The Fifteen West-to-South-Wall Texts (Utts. 254–58, 260–63, 267–72). ↩
De Lubicz, Symbol and the Symbolic. p. 9. ↩
Naydler, Jeremy. Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred. Inner Traditions/Bear & Co, 1996. Chapter 8: The Soul Incarnate. Transcending the Distributed Psyche. ↩
Naydler, The Future of the Ancient World. Chapter 11: The Judaic Path to Monotheism. ↩↩
Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1996. p. 147. ↩
Achrati, Ahmed. "Hand and foot symbolisms: From rock art to the Qur'ān." Arabica 50.4 (2003): 464–500. p. 487. ↩
Achrati, "Hand and foot symbolisms". p. 494. ↩
Naydler, Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts. Part 4: Anointing with the Seven Holy Oils (Utts. 72–78, 79, 81). ↩
Naydler, The Future of the Ancient World. Chapter 11: Christ and the Gods. The Gods and the Psyche. ↩
Naydler, The Future of the Ancient World. Chapter 6: On the Divinity of the Gods. God and the Gods. ↩
Naydler, Temple of the Cosmos. Chapter 3: Myths of Cosmogenesis. Heliopolis. ↩
Frater Acher. Holy Daimon. Scarlet Imprint, 2018. ↩
Avalon, Arthur. The Serpent Power. Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1950. pp. 35–36. ↩
Book of the Dead, chapters 43 and 30B, in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. II: The New Kingdom (University of California Press, 1976). ↩↩

Ophiouchos

2018-02-22T18:00:00+01:00

or Conquering Shai-Hulud

(Version 1.2 - 29/10/2018)

Last week's New Moon has been a very special occasion for me.

Having Followed a suggestion by my occultist pen-pal Len W. to perform the Stele of Jeu rite on New Moon every month (the night sky is headless), this last one marked the half-year anniversary since I started on the day of the Great American Eclipse last summer - my self initiation.

This last one was an eclipse too. To me it felt like a turning point or "levelling up". Besides the semi-anniversary aspect, it has been the most powerful performance of this ritual ever, with lasting effects.

Inspired by Spiro' report I have wanted to perform the ritual in demotic Greek for quite some time now, as that's the language it was originally composed in. I finally got around to doing that and I have to say that despite my stumbling over the words and pronounciation of this unfamiliar language it felt very poetic and emotionally gripping.

As if that were not enough of a challenge I also worked up the courage to modify the Headless Rite to give it a darker and potentially more dangerous twist - just to see how it would effect the outcome. I have been fascinated by ancient myths around solar eclipses about the sun being devoured by dragons or serpents like in Egyptian and Slavic skylore.

During a solar eclipse that always occur on New Moon for obvious astronomical reasons, it's not only the night sky that is headless, but also the day sky on the other side of the globe! This occasion seemed auspicious to try to approach the dark and slithering ancient dragon in its attempt to swallow the sun right at its climax and divert some of it's indomitable serpentine energy into myself.

I remembered a very powerful Greek prayer to the old snake from a ritual by the German magical order of Fraternitas Saturni and I incorporated it into the Headless Rite after the part of self-exorcism and divine ascension. This is the Call to the Serpent:

ho ophis, ho archaios
ho drakon, ho megas
ho en kai ho on kai ho zon
eis tous ainonas ton ainonon
meta tou pneumato sou!

It translates roughly to the following:

The primeval serpent
the great dragon
who was and who is
and who lives through the aeons of aeons
He is with your spirit!

I like to start many of my rituals with orphic hymns to the planetary gods of the hour and the day, so for this one I chose the hymn to Phanes, the Protogonos, as it suits the occasion and ritual perfectly.

Here is the full ritual in phonetic Greek, followed by my personal report, which I recommend skipping to avoid spoilers if you want to try it out yourself :)

Akephalos Ophiouchos Ritual

Preparation

Wait until the climax of the eclipse has been reached to catch the moon's waxing energy alongside the serpentine power.

Light Myrrh incense as an offering to Phanes, anoint yourself with some holy oil, wear the papyrus strip with the six names and the auspicious sign as described in the Stele of Jeu. Meditate until you feel ready. Face towards the celestial North and recite the words:

Orphic Hymn to Protogonos

Protogonon kaleo diphyé, megan, aitheroplagkton,
ôiogené, chryseaisin agallomenon pterygessi,
tayroboan, genesin makaron thnetôn t' anthropon,
sperma polymneston, polyorgion, Érikepaion,
arreton, kryphion roizetora, pamphaes ernos,
osson os skotoessan apemayrosas omichlen
pante dinetheis pterygon ripais kata kosmon
lampron agon phaos agnon, aph' ou se Phaneta kiklesko
éde Priepon anakta kai Antaygen elikopon.
alla, makar, polymeti, polyspore, baine gegethôs
es teletén agian polypoikilon orgiophantais.

Stele of Jeu With Call to the Serpent

Se kalō, ton akephalon,
ton ktisanta gēn kai ouranon,
ton ktisanta nykta kai ēmeran,
se ton ktisanta phōs kai skotos.
Sy ei Osoronnōphris, on oudeis eide pōpote.
Sy ei Iabas! Sy ei Iapōs!
Sy diekrinas to dikaion kai to adikon.
Sy epoiēsas thēly kai arren.
Sy edeixas sporan kai kaprous.
Sy epoiēsas tous anthrōpous allēlophilein kai allēlomisein.
Egō eimi Mousēs o prophētēs sou,
ō paredōkas ta mysteria sou ta synteloumena Israēl.

Sy edeixas ygron kai chēron kai pasan trophēn.
Epakouson mou! Egō eimi aggelos tou Phaprō Osoronnōphris.
Touto estin sou to onoma to alēthinon to paradidomenon tois prophētais Israēl.
Epakouson mou.
Arbathiaō reibet athelebersēth ara blatha albeth ebenphchi chitasgoē ibaōth iaō

Eisakouson moth kai apostrepson to daimonion touto.
Epikaloumai se, ton en tō kenō pneymati deinon kai aoraton theon.
Arogogorobraō sochou modoriō phalarchaō ooo

Agie Akephale! Apallaxon ton deina apo tou synechontos ayton daimonos.
Roubriaō mari ōdam baabnabaōth ass adōnai aphniaō ithōlēth abrasach aēōōy
Ischyre Akephale! Apallaxon ton deina apo tou synechontos ayton daimonos.
Mabarraiō ioēl kotha athorēbalō abraōth Apallaxon ton deina.
Aōth abraōth basym isak sabaōth iaō

outos estin o kyrios tōn theōn.
outos estin o kyrios tēs oikoumenēs.
outos estin on oi anemoi phobountai.
outos estin o poiēsas phōnēs prostagmati eaytou panta.
Kyrie! Basiley! Dynasta! Boēthe! Sōson psychēn.
Ieou pyr iou pyr iaōt iaēō ioou abrasach sabriam oo yy ey oo yy adōnaie
Ēdē, ēdē, eyaggelos tou theou.
Anlala lai gaia apa diachanna choryn

(center yourself in the universe, omnipresent in all eons)

(call to the serpent:)

ho ophis, ho archaios
ho drakon, ho megas
ho en kai ho on kai ho zon
eis tous ainonas ton ainonon
meta tou pneumato mou!

(continue Headless Rite:)

Egō eimi o Akephalos Daimōn, en tois posin echōn tēn orasin.
Egō eimi o Ischyros, o echōn to pyr to athanaton.
Egō eimi ē Alētheia, o misōn adikēmata ginesthai en tō kosmō.
Egō eimi o astraptōn kai brontōn.
Egō eimi ou estin o idrōs ombros epipiptōn epi tēn gēn ina ocheyē.
Egō eimi ou to stoma kaietai di’ olou.
Egō eimi gennōn kai apogennōn.
Egō eimi ē Charis tou Aiōnos.
Onoma moi kardia periezōsmenē ophin.
Exelthe kai akolouthēson.

(the divine vowels:)

Aié aiôi éôiaé aé iô ôé aiéoueuôai eai uo iaô iôé oau aeé uôuô

(call to the serpent again:)

ho ophis, ho archaios
ho drakon, ho megas
ho en kai ho on kai ho zon
eis tous ainonas ton ainonon
meta tou pneumato mou!

(the six names, greatest name that adds to 9999:)

Chabrach phneschér phichro phnurô phôchô bôch

(subject to me all daimons...:)

Ypotaxon moi panta ta daimonia, ina moi ē ypekoos pas daimōn ouranios kai aitherios kai epigeios kai ypogeios kai chersaios kai enydros kai pasa epipompē kai mastix ē theou. Kai estai soi ta daiamonia panta ypekoa. Estin de to agathon zōdion·

(meditate until you feel ready to leave)

Personal Report

I usually do most of my rituals outside in a park nearby at my favourite quiet spot.

It was slightly snowing when I left the house walked towards my "temple". I already started breathing deeply and in a slow rhythm to prepare mentally.

After arriving I did the planetary prayer to Zeus and closed my eyes for a brief meditation. Right after that I followed a gut feeling and walked away from my usual spot to a more secluded one as I somehow didn't feel enough "privacy".

Closer to the naked branches of some wintery trees I felt more secure and I lit my Myrrh incense stick and put on the papyrus crown I usually use for the Headless Rite. Facing North, after some minutes of quiet breathing I started reciting the Hymn to Protogonos. It felt strange to not do it in my mother language, but powerful.

I continued with the Stele of Jeu text but couldn't help but feel like there was someone nearby. I read the words slowly, trying to get into a rhythm and to pronounce everything correctly. After the first paragraph I turned around to see if someone was there. Nothing. The usual paranoia. I continued.

I visualized myself growing slowly as I spoke the words. The Earth became smaller and smaller under my feet. As I gazed upwards into the dark sky I had a vision of a black serpentine body moving amorphously like seeing it deep under a surface of water. Although I looked up, it felt like the movement was far below me. It was a sense of loss of orientation.

As I continued to recite the text, I imagined myself floating downwards towards the pile of slithering scales. I myself was gigantic. I could see the entire universe. But I realized the draconian creature under me was much, much bigger. I felt a hint of fear, but pushed it away and I was approaching the part of the barbarous words and self-exorcism, so I put a lot of effort into sounding authoritative.

There it was again, the feeling of being watched! I recited the powerful call to the serpent and saw myself floating towards it again, sinking down - now it did not seem as gigantic as before. I felt courageous and I resisted the urge to turn around again in paranoia and I spontaneously started turning slowly around my own axis, tracing a spiral around myself with the incense stick.

I created a whirling vortex around me, circling around the Northern celestial pole above me, and around the serpent below me. The flux pulled the snake up in a kind of dancing motion. It spiralled around me creating a gigantic tunnel of energy and I was in its center, controlling the rotation. I have never had such strong images during a ritual and such a physical feeling of energy flowing through my body.

When I spoke the "subject to me all daimons..." formula the vortex slowly faded from my mind's vision and I was back in the park. It started snowing more heavily and I felt high like on cocaine. Pumped with energy I had the urge to flex all my muscles at once very strongly up to the point where I felt a strain in my neck. I focussed on my breath to calm down a bit, stuck the incense stick into the ground and stared at its glowing tip for a while.

On the way home I felt very high and I could hear my heart pumping. I envisioned having slit shaped reptilian pupils and it made me smile. I turned my phone back on from flight mode and received a text message.

It was Ricardo, a fellow mage friend who knew that I was out to do the ritual. I expected him to ask how it went, but instead I read:

He wrote me that he had meditated like every evening and because he knew I was out for the rite, he had spontaneously tried to visualise remotely watching me performing it. I was speechless when he continued to tell me that he had a blurry vision of slowly approaching me from behind, seeing me wearing a crown and holding a stick in my hand, being surrounded by a vortex of energy. He came closer and tried to touch my shoulder when suddenly he felt a surge of energy pushing him back, completely losing me out of sight. He even talked about my location, which wasn't exactly where I had been but only around 150 meters away from where I had done the ritual. He did not know beforehand which park I would go to. I was shocked!

I could hardly sleep that night, it felt as if I had had too much coffee. Until today, a whole week later I feel pumped with physical energy and very mindful of my presence in the here and now, almost like when microdosing psychedelics.

One negative outcome of the performance is that my ego seems overly boosted. I lack my usual humbleness and feel almost a bit arrogant from time to time and my patience level is lower than usual. I feel distant waves of aggression lurking under the surface. But I am aware of the differences and it's all under control.

Overall I must say it has been an amazing experience.

The next morning images from the movie "Dune" came into my mind, of the main protagonist Paul Atreides running towards the giant sandworm called Shai-Hulud to climb and ride it. See for yourself :)

Akephalos Redux

2018-02-22T11:00:00+01:00

(Version 3.0 - 19/10/2026: update with Egyptian sources at the end)

(Version 2.3 - 28/10/2018)

After half a year of monthly practice of the Stele of Jeu in different variations I have come to a different understanding of it than when I started. Before beginning to practice the routine I spent several months researching every single bit about this ritual and about the Headless One, which proved quite fruitful in terms of grasping and executing the ritual and the deities addressed.

In this post I am briefly revisiting my path with the Headless One, summing up some points of my research and laying out my own conclusions. It will most probably be updated in the future.

Headlessness

In his amazing book about the history of spirits and their interaction with humankind - "Star.Ships" - Gordon White talks about "headlessness" being a very ancient spiritual concept, possibly from as far back as the Paleolithic. In his chapter "Part VIII. The Mirror of Heaven" he writes:

Ritual dismemberment remains a dominant motif in many initiatory traditions to this day and may ultimately date back to the very beginning of the formation of the Laurasian storyline (and perhaps earlier) where the universe is created from the dismembered parts of a giant monster or ancient god. It is quite possibly a very early conceptualisation of the microcosm/ macrocosm connection of the ‘unified human’ with all of Creation. The most potent visual is, of course, the removal and then return of the head, a seat of power recognised in magic and sorcery for tens of millennia, which is – I posit – reflected in the faceless (headless) T- shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe and, of course, the ‘headless hunter’ that is Orion itself. From an Egyptian ritual perspective, when Osiris is headless, he is in the Underworld. The restoration of his head corresponds with his restoration to the Living world thanks to the magic of Isis/ Sirius.¹⁷

The Aghori Vimalananda about the symbolism of headlessness in Tantric magic:

When I am finished with the number of offerings I have planned to make, at the very end of my homa, I put a coconut into the fire. The coconut represents the worshipper’s head, with its three eyes. Also, it is full of water, just as the head is full of blood, cerebrospinal fluid and glandular secretions. When I offer the coconut I offer my entire consciousness to the fire with a request that it be transmuted into a divine consciousness. I offer my own head to get a divine head. Then I bow to the fire and request my deity to return to His or Her home, and my homa is completed. Then I sit by the fire for a while, after I am finished, and commune with it.¹⁸

Akephalos in the Greek Magical Papyri

"Akephalos" seems to be one of the most controversial deities that appears in the Greek Magical Papyri. He has been identified as quite opposite demons and deities by academia and operative magi. Roughly, the interpretations can be broken down to two different directions: one is the "Typhonian" camp, the other one the "Osirian" camp.

In academia the former is represented most prominently by Armand L. Delatte, who claimed to have identified the headless one as being the Egyptian god of the desert, Seth, syncretized with the Greek monstrous demon Typhon¹. The German classical philologist Richard Wünsch follwed this interpretation in his work "Sethian curse tablets of Rome." In magical circles, besides Mathers, The Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley and the OTO, the prominent contemporary occultist and magician Jake Stratton-Kent delivers more diverse arguments in his booklet "The Headless One"² than the other mentioned authors, but comes to the same conclusion.

First to challenge this interpretation academically seems to have been Karl Preisendanz, another translator of the PGM, who argued against Delatte and Wünsch in his monograph "Akephalos - The Headless God"³ (which I summarized here). He argues that the headless god could not be any other than the dismembered and resurrected Egyptian god of the underworld, Osiris. More contemporary scholars of this camp are Reinhold Merkelbach and Maria Totti, who found more supportive evidence of the Osirian character in their "Abrasax" collection of PGM spells⁴ through parallels in the phrasing to the Isis Mysteries.

Both camps also introduce the Egyptian protector spirit Bes as a witness of their interpretation. Bes is often depicted as a lion rearing up on his hind legs, or as a hairy demon with his face on his chest, which one could interpret as "having no head" with a lot of imagination if one really wants to. The former camp syncretizes this demon with Typhon, the latter underlines his role as the protector of Osiris.

In my eyes both ways are completely useless attempts that prove nothing. I've seen many depictions of Bes, and in none of them he appeared even close to being "headless". He was one of the most commonly worshipped spirits by royal as well as common families in Egypt and able to help establish relationships with every other spirit, so it is to no surprise that he appears in many occasions in Greco Egyptian spells, but I doubt any close connection to Akephalos.

(Photo: Statues of Bes in the Neues Museum Berlin)

If I had to choose between the two camps, I would lean more towards the Osirian one, simply because their arguments seem more consistent to me. And in relation to the "Headless Rite" it makes more sense to ritually identify with the god of the underworld in order to gain control over the world of spirits. Oh and yes, Osiris is literally called by his name in the ritual.

But to be honest, the more I am practicing the Headless Rite the less I believe the Headless One to be one specific deity or spirit, but an archetype of headlessness itself, with all the symbolism and interpretations it evokes, from loss of orientation to transcendence.

(Update: in a newer article I dive deeper into this topic)

(Update 2026: what the Egyptian sources themselves say about Osiris and Seth, at the end of this article)

PGM VII and VIII

In PGM VII 222ff I don't believe Bes has anything to do with headlessness. Yes, he is being conjured and even called "headless one", but I agree with Preisendanz that this is probably an erroneous version of the same spell in PGM VIII 64ff, where Bes is conjured, but with the help of Osiris.

The Berlin Papyrus

PGM II aka. the Berlin Papyrus features this famous drawing of a headless person with the seven sacred vowels written over his chest. The Typhonian camp likes to see "snake heads" coming out of his shoulders as a proof of the Typhonian character of this Akephalos. The Osirian Preisendanz claims that the seven vowels and the magic words "Damnameneus" and "Semesilam" that are written next to the drawing, as well as the scarab drawing on the previous column and the spell itself hint towards a solar deity, a syncretized Helios-Osiris.

I think both are over-interpretations of this drawing, because when you read the instructions of the spell this drawing is a part of, it says to "make a lampwick out of a piece of cloth taken from one who has died violently" and the provided image is to be drawn onto this piece of cloth. In the Greek orginal the term "one who has died violently" is "βιαιος". Usually, the spirits of the dead who died violently (βιαιοθανατοι) are considered very powerful. I support Franz Dornseiff in his quite pragmatic explanation that the drawn headless figure is simply a sketch of a decapitated "βιαιος"⁵. Also Merkelbach/Totti lean towards this interpretation⁴.

Another possible interpretation is that the depicted headless god is the Egyptian Decan deity "Kenmu" who is most commonly pictured as having no head or his head hidden behind a disk shaped object. Kenmu's Greek name is "Komme" and in lines 117 until 124 the spell calls upon "Kommes" several times, the whole ritual might even be an attempt to bind the Decan god and one of the ways to achieve this is by drawing his picture.

(Photo: The Decan Kenmu, image on the ceiling of the Hypostile Hall of Dendera)

Akephalos in the Stele of Jeu

In the "Headless Rite" aka. "Stele of Jeu" it is Osiris who is summoned as "the headless one" and "the beautiful Osiris". He is being identified and syncretised with the Jewish desert demon / creator god YHVH. In his forms as Osiris-Ra, and Osiris-Aion he also hints towards the demon Abrasax and the declaration of his name being a "heart girt by a serpent" clearly points to the primordial god Phanes and his other later synthesized mutations as Aion and Mithras.

The descriptions in the praises of the text clearly point to Osiris who had put the newly created world into an order of harmonious opposites together with Isis. It also fits the creation process in Genesis.

I tried to find the meanings of the barbarous names used in the rite. Some of them are Hebrew (e.g. αρβαθιαω = Arbah Iao = "four of god") voces magicae, some are strings of sacred vowels (e.g. αηωωυ), some sound Egyptiany (e.g. σοχοu) but for most of them I was not able to determine a meaning.

Number Crunching

It is interesting that by adding the isopsephic values of all subsequent words in the strings of barbarous names and then reducing them ("rule of nine") to single digit numbers, most of them result in 1 or 4.

αρβαθιαω ρειβετ αθελεβερσηθ αρα βλαθα αλβεu εβενφχι χιτασγοη ιβαωθ ιαω (5905 reduced to 1)
αρογογοροβραω σοχοu μοδοριω φαλαρχαω οοο (5737 reduced to 4)
ροuβριαω μαρι ωδαμ βααβναβαωθ ασσ αδωναι αφνιαω ιθωληθ αβρασαξ αηωωυ (8887 reduce to 4)
μαβαρριαω ιεηλ κοθα αθορηβαλω αβραωθ (3142 reduce to 1, also when adding up the ordial values gematrically, they reduce from 289 to 1)
αωθ αβαωθ βασυμ ισακ σαβαωθ ιαω (4321 reduce to 1)
ιεοu πυρ ιοu πυρ ιαωτ ιαηω ιοοu αβρασαξ σαβριαμ οο υυ ευ οο υυ αδωναιε (7490 reduce to 2)
ανλαλα λαι γαια απα διαχαννα χορυν (2188 reduce to 1)

For completion here the revived vowels and six names too:

αιη αιωι ηωιαη αη ιω ωη αιηουευωαι εαι υο ιαω ιωη οαυ αεη υωυω (9999 reduce to 9)
χαβραχ φνεσχηρ φιχρο φνυρω φωχω βωχ (9999 reduce to 9, also when adding up the ordial values gematrically, they reduce from 486 to 9)

Towards the Godhead

After regular practice, my own understanding of the Stele of Jeu ritual is that it follows a quite transcendental logic and seems to describe an almost Gnostic ascension of the own self towards the Godhead through stages of self-identification with different spiritual forms up to the highest being of the universe.

One begins as a human being humbly praying to Osiris, praising his divine achievements and immediately syncretizing him with the Jewish god YHVH as Iabas and Iapôs in the usual pagan way of accepting the gods as gods beyond belief-systems.
On the second step the practitioner identifies as an enlightened human, having achieved Gnosis, having become a prophet: Moses as well as a Messenger of Pharaoh Osiris.
The third step is a more potent address to the supreme god by using a row of secret barbarous names, to really get his attention. Embedded in more similar subsequent calls is a request to exorcise restraining demons, which is applied to oneself. It's a process of cleansing and purification embedded in magic language of the ancient gods.
After being cleared of all demons, in step four one identifies as being an angel of god, taking the form of an invincible, eternal, headless daimon.
The velocity of the ascent now increases rapidly, as in step five one becomes the truth itself, with clear moral views, one becomes the thundering and lightning wielding Zeus as well as the terrifying and unpredictable god of creation and destruction - raging with a flaming mouth, Yahweh!
In the next step the image becomes blurrier and more abstract. No more identifications with anthropomorphic deities, but a rise up to the level of the symbolic, the Favor of the Aion, your own name having become ineffable and only to be understood as an image: a heart encircled by a serpent.
The seventh and final level of ascension to the godhead becomes completely inexpressible and can only be attempted to be described beyond human imagination, by the largest possible magical number of 9,999 expressed in voces magicae and the vibrations of the divine sounds of the seven vowels. Images are transcended to the level of pure resonance, the unified field of consciousness.

The ascent is completed and one demands the subjugation of all daimons. From such a perspective that literally includes everything, even gods.

(Update: in a newer article I dive deeper into this topic)

(Photo: Phanes Protogonos, surrounded by the Zodiac)

Aligning the Temple

In the beginning I used to draw a circle, do a banishing routine and face the direction of Orion while doing this ritual. In his book Chaos Protocols Gordon White suggested this direction and he elaborates on it connecting to the millennia old tradition of honouring the Headless Hunter in the sky in Star.Ships:

Straddling the modern and supremely ancient world, the Headless Rite is an invocation of an asterism that led tribes across the globe for tens of millennia, that had ‘headless’ star temples raised in honour of it and its consort where hunters would feast, take drugs and learn the skills of grain cultivation, that became associated with stellar immortality (and still grain) to such an extent that great stone maps of it were built upon the earth. In a transparently shamanic survival, alignment with this asterism conferred kingship over the realm of the spirits. So potent was the initiatory power of headlessness – to have one’s head in another realm – that it has survived into two of the three great religions of the Near East in the form of John the Baptist, who ‘initiates’ Christ and thus brings that same promise of victory over death back down to earth.¹⁷

After several executions I found myself more drawn to the Egyptian parts in it and faced the consort and sister of Orion, Isis, in her form as Sothis or the star Sirius.

But once I had worked out the six names to be used according to the PGM, I started following the orientation in the original text towards North. The difference in power to this ritual was very much noticable and I continued facing this direction until today.

As I understand the ritual today I assert that North is the only logical direction on your ascent up. And it's not the magnetic North, it's the celestial North. The visible turning point of the axis mundi, the heart girt by a serpent (the constellation Draco revolves around the polar star).

Having experienced the potency of this proceeding I also completely stopped drawing a circle and banishing. It just doesn't fit. I visualize myself and my changing divine position in the universe during each of the seven steps and as the universe revolves around me while I rise up it becomes the magic circle. As I grow in divine potency after my self-exorcism, there's nothing left to banish.

I am certain that it is quite a risky ritual that needs to be followed through until the end once started. I think there might be unpredictable consequences if one doesn't complete it or skips parts in it. Sometimes it happens that I stumble pronouncing the barbarous names correctly and to be on the safe side, I usually repeat the whole sentence until it feels right.

(Continued in a newer article)

(Update 2026: on the North and the Bear, see below)

Update 2026: Osiris and Seth in Egyptian Sources

Eight years later, with better sources than I had in 2018, I still side with the Osirian camp. But the Egyptian texts themselves add a lot to the picture, and some of it is a fair word to the Typhonians too.

Allusion, not story

The famous story of Osiris' death, the coffin and the fourteen pieces, comes to us mostly from Plutarch, a Greek. Egyptian texts of the pharaonic period "never say that Osiris died", as Erik Hornung puts it; an image "would fix the event and even render it eternal"⁶. Miriam Lichtheim: the death of Osiris "could only be alluded to"⁷. In the Egyptian allusions he is either drowned or cut to pieces, alternatives rather than one story, and the drowning puts him into the Nile's yearly flood⁸.

Onnophris

The name the Stele calls him by, Osoronnophris, is Egyptian: Osiris Wennefer. Jan Assmann translates the epithet as "he who remains matured"; Edward Butler as "Enduring in well-being/the good". For Assmann, Osiris is the god of djet, the time of what has been completed and stays, as against the sun god's time of what comes and is possible⁹.

The whole god in every tomb

I used to think each tomb of Osiris held one piece of him. Butler corrects this: each was a resting place of his whole person, and linking the provinces to his limbs "affirms the nation's indivisibility, not its fragmentation, by literally taking up or 'incorporating' the local cults into the God's body"⁸. In the Late Period this became a rite: forty-two priests, one for each province, carried "the limb specific to that nome" in canopic jars and poured it into a mould shaped like a mummy, with sand and barley. "After a period of eight days, the barley would sprout and the mummiform body would be covered with green."¹⁰

Seth at the prow

Seth is the murderer, but never simply the villain. He also stands "at the prow of the sun god's boat in the act of stabbing Apopis with a huge spear". Assmann: "He represents an evil that is necessary to keep the world going"¹⁰. In the Pyramid Texts Horus sets Seth under Osiris "so that he may lift you up", and the instrument of the Opening of the Mouth, the ritual that restores the dead person's senses and speech, is made of "the iron which issued from Seth": iron, for the Egyptians, came from the sky, as meteorites¹¹.

The Ramesside tale of Horus and Seth tells it with humour. When Isis harpoons Seth in the water, he cries: "Do you love the stranger more than your maternal brother Seth?" She lets him go, and Horus, furious, cuts off his mother's head; she walks on as "a statue of flint without a head". The throne is finally settled by a letter from Osiris in the underworld: "Who among you is mightier than I?" And Seth is kept: "Let Seth, son of Nut, be given to me to dwell with me and be my son. And he shall thunder in the sky and be feared."¹²

A word to the Typhonian camp

"In the older versions, there was always a consensus, with Seth agreeable and compensated at the end, whereas in the late versions, he was punished, annihilated, driven out, and explicitly condemned", nicknamed "the Mede"¹³. The Stele of Jeu is a Roman-era text, from the time when Seth was most hated. I still don't think the god it calls is Seth. But Seth is in the rite: as the one who made the god headless in the first place, and in the iron of the Opening of the Mouth, the ritual that gives the dead their face, their senses and their voice back.

The unseen one

"Whom none has ever seen" need not point to Seth either. The same papyrus as the Stele, in an oracle of Sarapis, names Bainchōōōch, Egyptian b3 n kky, the "spirit (soul) of darkness", alongside the "hurler of shudderful thunder and lightning"¹⁴. A god unseen because he is in the dark.

The North and the Bear

Facing North made the rite stronger for me, and the papyri suggest why that North was charged. Plutarch says the soul of Typhon is the Bear¹⁵. A "Powerful spell of the Bear" in the papyri has you write "the hundred-lettered name of Typhon", and Betz notes that "The association of Typhon with the constellation of the Bear [...] is Egyptian"; the so-called Mithras Liturgy calls the Bear "a golden shoulder of a young bull"¹⁴. Whether the pharaonic Egyptians already saw Seth's foreleg in the Big Dipper is disputed¹⁶. In the Stele's own world, facing North meant facing a sky Seth had a share in.

Delatte, Armand L., ""Études sur la magie grecque. V. Akephalos Theos", Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Année 1914 Volume 38 Numéro 1 pp. 189-249 ↩
Stratton-Kent, Jake, "The Headless One. A Guide to the Underworld.", Hadean Press, Published in June, 2012. 28 pages. ↩
Preisendanz, Karl, "Akephalos. Der kopflose Gott", Beihefte zum Alten Orient 8 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1926) ↩
Reinhold Merkelbach, Maria Totti, "Abrasax: Ausgewählte Papyri religiösen und magischen Inhalts", Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia, 1991 ↩↩
Dornseiff, Franz, "Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie" ↩
Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 151–152. ↩
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. II: The New Kingdom (University of California Press, 1976). ↩
Edward P. Butler, "Osiris", Henadology. ↩↩
Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 77–78; Butler, "Osiris". ↩
Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), chapter "Seth the Iconoclast". ↩↩
Pyramid Texts, utterances 356 and 21, after Edward P. Butler, "Seth", Henadology. ↩
"Horus and Seth", in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II, pp. 214–223. ↩
Assmann, The Search for God, pp. 139–140. ↩
PGM V. 1–53, PGM IV. 1331–89 and PGM IV. 475–829, in Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (2nd ed. 1992), with the glossary entry on Bainchooch by R. K. Ritner. ↩↩
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 21. ↩
Joanne Conman, Ancient Egyptian Sky Lore (2013), against; José Lull and Juan Antonio Belmonte, "A Firmament above Thebes", Journal for the History of Astronomy 37 (2006), for. ↩
White, Gordon, "Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits", Scarlet Imprint (VIII. The Mirror of Heaven, X. Children of the Mother of Heaven) ↩↩
Robert E. Svoboda, AghoraII: Kundalini, Brotherhood of Life Publishing, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA ↩

Preisendanz' Headless God

2017-09-02T20:30:00+02:00

For my research about the headless one that got way beyond my initial goal of simply translating the text for personal praxis I stumbled upon a publication by Karl Preisendanz, the first translator of the PGM into German in the 1920s, called "Akephalos - The Headless God" The book is a monograph Preisendanz published as a reaction to several publications by other researchers who had misinterpreted the identity of the headless one in his opinion. It is a very interesting book that cleared up a lot of questions and confusions for me and in my opinion has very concise lines of arguments that convinced me more than similar ones by other authors who wrote about the same topic.

It seems to me that there is no English translation of this book, so here is a brief summary of the contents, in case you are interested.

Akephalos - der kopflose Gott

In the preface Preisendanz explains that he had read the work "Akephalos Theos" by A. Delatte and felt the need to publish a paper in order to point out errors and misconceptions in Delatte's work, although he found this work very helpful and inspiring for his own research. Additionally he wanted to argue against R. Wünsch's idea of following Delatte's conclusion of a Seth-Typhonian character of the headless one.

In the first chapter Preisendanz gives a general overview of headlessness in folk magic and mythology around the world. He talks about decapitated ghosts in Germanic lore, the headless Molos and Triton in Greek folklore, general lore of veneration of heads of gods and martyrs, the stoic round god of Varro, the Thracian and Phrygian god Korybas, the Pepelekismenoi of Kypros, headless ghosts of decapitated criminals, animal ghosts without head, some history of separate head burials in pagan Germanic cultures to prevent a return from the underworld, the black headless men on ships in Byzantium, the burning of fallen travelling warriors in Italy and separate burial of their heads for mere practicality, the dismemberment of corpses in ancient Egypt with subsequent reassembly and embalment related to the Osiris cult, the legend of the papyrus head ship from Egypt to Byblos, the importance of headless godliness in Egypt in general.

Preisendanz continues with a rant against Delatte's connection of the headless demon Phonos from the Testament of Solomon with the Graeco-Egyptian god Seth-Typhon and arguments that already the description in the Testament of Solomon states that Phonos has his face on his chest, thus he is "stethokephal" and not "akephal" while the real headless one has no mouth or eyes but looks like a decapitated man.

(Egyptian drawing of the headless one holding a sun disk)

In "The Headless God on Gems" Preisendanz again rants against Delatte's interpretation of gem no. 615 of the numismatic museum of Athens which shows a human figure with the head of a horse or donkey in which Delatte saw the solar god Seth-Typhon and a about Delatte's interpretation of a second Athenian gem of the Roskowitz collection that shows a similar but decapitated figure and an ourobos where D. had claimed that it depicted an act of self-decapitation. Preisendanz doubts these interpretations and concludes that it was probably a depiction of the jackal headed Anubis and the beheaded Osiris like on the gnostic gem of C.W. King that Delatte had correctly pointed out.

What follows is a chapter about Seth in the PGM. Here Preisendanz objects to the syncretism of Osiris, Horos, Apollon, Seth-Typhon and Bes by A. Delatte who sees them all as solar gods who could all be depicted as headless. He deconstructs every single claim by Delatte of Seth being a solar deity: Just because Seth had helped Ra with the removal of Apophis doesn't make him a solar deity. He goes through PGM IV 155-285 proving that there is no proof of Seth-Typhon being a solar god, but a powerful and dreadful spirit, despite ritual details about facing the sun. In PGM VII 961-970, Seth is conjured as a powerful creator god and fire demon, but that does not make him a solar deity either, the same goes for PGM XII 11, 15ff, PGM IV, VII 366.

"The Roman Curse Tablets" is a quite lengthy chapter where Preisendanz deconstructs the identifications of headless or donkey-headed figures with Typhon-Seth by his fellow researchers Richard Wünsch, M. Matters and others. I skipped over this chapter quite a lot, because it is quite boring when not knowing the works Preisendanz referred to.

Preisendanz points out inconsistencies in Wünsch's interpretations because sometimes he sees Osiris as "god of the waters" and on other occasions he connectes Seth to being a water deity. He condemns Wünsch's way too speculative interpretation of the beginning part of conjurations on the roman tablets that says "dee Phrygia, dee Nymphee, Aidonea" as merely misspellings of "dee Ephydrias, dee Nymphaios, Adonai". Apparently Wünsch created a god "Ephydrias", who sits on a water vessel whom he equates with Osiris and a god "Nymphaios", allegedly just another name of the former (god of the water nymphs and Adonai as the Jewish god syncretised with the Greek Aidoneus. WÜnsch describes Osiris as god of the water and the underworld. Preisendanz corrects that instead the names refer to a female demon "Phrygia" and "Nymphee" to be either the plural form of the female water nymphs or as is written in PGM IV 2614 the alias "Nymphê" of the goddess Hekate, which also explains the last name "Adoneia", another name for Hekate as of PGM IV 2564, 2855, 2726. So it's actually all about Hekate. Preisendanz goes on and on about other errors Wünsch apparently made, so I skipped to the end of the chapter where Preisendanz concludes that the Headless God can not definetly be identified within the Roman Curse Tablets, neither by Delatte, nor by Wünsch.

The next chapter, "The Headless God in the PGM", was obviously by far the most interesting one for me.

Preisendanz presents the "Stele of Jeu" text but without all the barbarous names. He explains the mixing of Graeco-Egyptian deities with Jewish elements and claims that the scribe "Jeu" was probably a jewish magician and added his own elements to Graeco-Egyptian magic tech.

Preisendanz states that the headless one is no other than Osiris. One evidence for this is that Osiris has been depicted as headless on a sarcophargus in Kairo. Delatte's claim that Seth is literally also part of the spell is wrong, because "Reibetatheleberseth" is one word, so just taking "seth" out of context is simply false. He acknowledges that "awesome and invisible god" is usually a term for Typhon, but argues that description could also be used for other deities.

(The headless Osiris on a Sarcophargus in Cairo, guarded by Nephtys and Isis)

Preisendanz criticizes the equalization of the headless god with Bes that Delatte concluded about PGM VII 222ff and PGM VIII 64ff. He argues that the former is probably a corrupted and fragmented version of a spell that was written down in a more detailed and correct version as the latter. In the latter version it is clearly Osiris who is being called as "the headless one." The other reason is the sketch that comes with PGM VIII of how to draw Bes. He is not depicted as headless and also not like he is usually depicted - as an ugly and hairy demon with a deformed face on his chest, but as a normal male figure wearing a crown and a sword. About the quite obvious connection of the "headless god, the face on his feet, etc." with Besas in PGM VIII 234, 244 P. argues that Besas in his classic depiction has his face on his chest, so he can't have his "face on his feet" at the same time. The rest of the conjuration also rather hints towards Osiris, the two birds next to the head representing Nephtys and Isis who took the form of two falcons. Preisendanz explains his interpretation of the term having the "face on his feet": Delatte's explanation of the serpent or jackal heads on the feet of some depictions of Bes is not sufficient.

(Drawing of Bes in PGM VIII)

Preisendanz presents images of beheaded captives in Egypt who had their heads between their feet but admits that he could not find any image like that that clearly depicted Osiris. He explains the Egyptian custom of Akroteriasmos, the dismemberment of a body before embalment where the head is usually put between the feet to make it impossible for the dead to wake up and pick it up again. As Osiris is the prototype of the concept of a dead god, so he probably also has had his head between his feet.

(Drawing of beheaded prisoners)

Preisendanz concludes about PGM VIII that instead of a syncreticism of Besas with the Headless One the real explanation is a simple magical practicality: Besas is correctly conjured as a protective spirit, partially by using the provided drawing, but in order to successfully conjure Besas there is a need for a higher authoritative spirit, so obviously Osiris is being called as the headless god, to kick Besas' ass. Preisendanz says Besas is a well known minor folk magic spirit and never depicted as headless, so the only possible identity of the headless one is Osiris.

He lists more evidence of Osiris as headless god, e.g. PGM XII 2, 1ff talks about a beheaded scarab, a symbol closely connected to Osiris, he also refers to the "Book of the Dead" and Budge's work "The Gods". Also the bas relief of Philae apparently shows a beheaded Osiris

In his chapter "The Headless God of the Berlin Papyrus" P. explains in great detail what PGM II is about, that some text seems to be missing and that it is a hymn to a syncretised Helios-Apollon, and that the magic image is a headless deity but it is not 100% clear who. The magic words "Damnameneus" and "Semesilam" hint towards a solar god, also the planetary vowels are usually used in a solar context. The scarab image described in the text and shown as a drawing hints towards that conclusion too.

What follows is a short chapter about two images of the Oslo papyrus where P. explains two headless depictions, of which one could be interpreted as Osiris, but the "questionable artist" drew the image so badly that it's too difficult to clearly interpret.

(one of the headless ones from the Oslo P.)

A very interesting chapter is "Akephalos in the Sky". Here P. describes that on the Dendera Zodiac some of the decan depictions show headless figures. He talks about every single one of them and that it is unfortunately unclear who is being depicted. He regrets that it cannot be proven but that it would be a beautiful connection between the headless one in the decans and the PGM. He refers to the book "Sphaera" by Franz Boll who talks about the decans in detail and that K. Dieterich even connected the drawings of PGM II with zodiac signs in one of his works.

In the last chapter Preisendanz lists examples of talismans showing Osiris as headless one or scarab headed one.

The Six Names

2017-08-19T21:00:00+02:00

Updated version 4.0

During my work on a functional version of the Stele of Jeu for ritual use based on the German translation by Preisendanz¹ and his monograph Akephalos - The Headless God² I hit a massive roadblock.

The ritual requires a formula of 6 names to be written on a parchment and recited facing north. But it surprised me to find no actual mention of these names in the text.

Isaac's Sabaoth

According to what I have seen in books, articles, and online discussions, all modern practitioners use the following voces magicae as the required formula:

AŌTH ABRAŌTH BASYM ISAK SABAŌTH IAŌ

This seems to work well enough for modern chaos magicians. But in the original PGM text there is no indication whatsoever that above words are the formula to be used. These six words are merely the only row of six subsequent voces magicae to be found in this spell³.

On top of that, above transliteration has a typo. It's supposed to be ABAOTH and not ABRAOTH. An observant reader has pointed out in the comments that both, this typo and this choice of six names, are most likely traceable to the book Hermetic Magic: The Postmodern Papyrus of Abaris by S. E. Flowers⁴.

I checked the sources and found that when the spell was first published⁵ in 1852 by Charles Goodwin it did not contain any transliterations of barbarous names. And as preliminary invocation in The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King⁶ by Aleister Crowley the spell neither had this typo, nor any special meaning attributed to these six words. But then again, Crowley was also quite liberal in his translation and adaptation of the spell.

So back to the original source. If you'd want to be persnickety like Preisendanz, who interpreted BASYM⁷ not as a name but as the Aramaic word "ba'shem" or "in the name of", it would only leave five names, wouldn't it?

According to the work "Abrasax" by Reinhold Merkelbach and Maria Totti⁸ from 1991 which includes a number of PGM spells with commentary, AOTH and likely also ABAOTH are shorter forms of SABAOTH. This means that the string of "barbarous names" reads as:

(SAB)AŌTH, (S)ABAŌTH, in the name of ISAAC('s) SABAŌTH-IAŌ

The Orphic Formula

In Betz' Greek Magical Papyri in Translation⁹ you can find a footnote regarding the six names:

The term ὄνομα apparently refers to a formula containing a number of magical words.

At this point in my research, I considered the possibility that the original author of the papyrus was referring to a formula so obvious and well known to magi at the time that simply mentioning "the six names" would have been enough for the reader to understand what was meant. What supports this idea is the fact that throughout the PGM, some voces magicae that are commonly used are just noted down as "do the usual" or as abbreviations, e.g. "ABERAMEN (formula)" in PGM IV, 182 actually refers to the palindrome:

ABERAMENThŌOULERThEXANAXEThRELUOŌThNEMAREBA

(See also Leonardo Drakon's awesome post on this)

But what could be the well known "six names"? One of the most famous magical hexagrammata of the time that can be found on numerous talismans and in other protective magical contexts in dozens of places between Egypt and Sicily are the Ephesia Grammata, also called Orphic formula. This terminology can also be found in PGM VII, 452:

But if you cause [the plate] to be buried or [sunk in] river or land or sea or stream or coffin or in a well, write the Orphic formula, saying, "ASKEI KAI TASKEI" and, taking a black thread, make 365 knots, ...

The six names of the "Ephesia Grammata" are:

ASKION KATASKION LIX TETRAX DAMNAMENEUS AISION

I highly recommend the awesome paper The Ephesia Grammata: Logos Orphaikos or Apolline Alexima pharmaka? by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III. and this great post over at the Hekate Covenant on a different version of the Ephesa Grammata that is being used in the PGM.

While the orphic formula is indeed a powerful choice that would make much more sense to use instead of the widespread Isaac Sabaoth one discussed above, this is not the end of the story...

Scarab Hunt

The German Preisendanz translation¹ has a very interesting footnote regarding the "6 names". It claims that the original papyrus contains an annotation about the missing formula! Betz had merely hinted at this. The Preisendanz footnote says:

"On the upper edge of the column is written the (damaged) name ...AIE AIŌI EYIAE AEI ŌŌE AIEOYEYŌ... [and that] the formula is 49 letters long and has a value of 9999 ... reference to a different spell about resurrection of a scarab that has the same name with 49 letters."

(damaged note on the edge of the London Papyrus 46 aka. PGM V)

I also asked my friend Spiro who knows Greek to take a look at it and he interprets the annotation as something along the line of :

αιη αιωι ηυιαη αη ιω ωη αιηουευω ... ιωη οαυ αεη υωυω. And this is what the revived words of the scarab call for.

I found some spells in the same papyrus that involve a scarab: PGM V 213-303 which is neither about a resurrection of the beetle, nor does it have any voces magicae in it. Another one is PGM VII, 505-28 which features the 48 letter long magical name "AŌ SATHREN ABRASAX IAŌAI AEŌ ĒŌA ŌAĒ IAO IĒO EY AĒ EY IE IAŌAI", but isn't about resurrecting the bug. The only spell about actually reviving a scarab in the PGM is number IV, 475-829 but it only contains very short barbarous names.

But eventually I found something:

PGM II. 64-183 features a drawing of a scarab at the bottom edge. The described ritual is an "alternative procedure" of a conjuration of Apollon-Helios for wisdom and blessing. Especially when you look at the original papyrus (Berlin P. 5026) you will find it in the third column on the bottom.

And guess what image is drawn right next to this column? A HEADLESS figure! The same one that Jake Stratton-Kent used on his little "Headless One" chapbook.

In the middle of the column above the scarab (PGM II. 127) it is written:

I am he, NN, who have presented myself to you, and you have given me as a gift the knowledge of your most great name, of which the number is 9999: IĒ IE IA IAĒ IAE IEY IĒA IŌA IEY IĒI ĒIA EA EĒ ĒE ŌĒ ĒŌ EĒE EEĒ ĒEE AAŌ ŌEA EAŌ ŌI ŌE ĒŌ EĒ EAE III OOO YYY ŌŌŌ IY EY OY ĒEA IĒEA EAE EIA IAIE IĒA IOY IŌE IOY IĒ IĒ IĒ IĒIE;

Sounds familiar? Of course it does! Vowels!

Is this the formula the author was referring to in the scribbled note regarding the scarab?

Perhaps the annotation on the Stele of Jeu papyrus was done hastily. The author might have remembered that the name to be used was "on that scarab whatever page", that it enumerates to 9999 and consists of something along the line of "...AIE AIŌI EYIAE AEI ŌŌE AIEOYEYO...".

I threw the Greek letters from Preisendanz transcript into an isopsephy (Greek gematria) calculator but they add up to 15446. Weird...did I miss something?

When I cross-checked Kieren Barry's "Greek Qabalah"¹⁰ for the correct isophsephic values I stumbled upon the solution by coincidence.

There it was! I found it on page 96:

A talisman that features an image of Harpocrates (Horus) seated on a lotus flower surrounded by triads of adoring animals; on its reverse, the formula:

χαβραχ φνεσχηρ φιχρο φνυρω φωχω βωχ

A magical formula apparently known as "The Great Name" which gematrically adds up to 9999!

And it was there all the time!

This exact formula is written shortly AFTER the above mentioned vowels in the middle of the column with the scarab on it! It is mis-spelled and the whitespace is off, and due to the typo it actually doesn't add to 9999 but only 8139

χαβραχ φλιεσ κηρφι νυρω φωχω βωχ

According to footnote 39 in Betz⁹:

The spacing of this formula has been changed to conform to the spacing of the same formula found elsewhere in the PGM (see I. 141—42; III. 77—78, 151-52 , etc.)

the editor also erroneously "fixed" it to:

CHABRACH PHLIESKĒR PHIKRO PHINYRŌ PHŌCHŌBŌCH

Instead, the correct formula of the six names that add up to 9999 that the scribe hastily (or purposefully?) mis-spelled are actually supposed to be written like this:

χαβραχ φνεσχηρ φιχρο φνυρω φωχω βωχ

CHABRACH PHNESCHĒR PHICHRO PHNYRŌ PHŌCHŌ BŌCH

BINGO!

Chimeric Splicing

Now, the perfectionist in me wondered: what about the vowels from the annotation?

I remembered that in Merkelbach/Totti's Abrasax⁸ the authors offer a slightly different take on the annotation:

On the upper edge an annotation; First a series of vowels, then: These are (in total) 49 letters; the sum of the calculation is 9999.

No mention of a scarab here. According to the authors, it's the vowels that are supposed to add up to 9999.

Sure...let's do this...

Minus whatever vowels got lost from the torn corner of the papyrus we still have 39 vowels that add up to a gematric value of 8291. That leaves us with ten missing vowels that need to add up to 1708 to reach the required 9999.

I spent over an hour trying to splice the missing vowels into the ones we already have - and I failed!

It was just impossible to create an isopsephy value of 1708 with just 10 vowels and possible values of 1, 5, 8, 10, 70, 400, 800 without deleting any of the letters that we already have. Aaarrgh!

So I went full OCD and looked back at the original papyrus and deciphered the handwritten letters myself. I noticed that the first ypsilon (in ĒYIAĒ) seems to have been actually quite a guess by Preisendanz. More than half of the letter is missing at the top. It could totally also be another letter the scribe does not necessarily write in the full line height, for example a miniscule omega.

So I tried again with ĒŌIAĒ in the series of vowels instead of ĒYIAĒ:

αιη αιωι ηωιαη αη ιω ωη αιηουευω ιωη οαυ αεη υωυω

This leaves us with a value of 8691 and 1308 missing. Back to the splicing table. Eventually I got it!

If we add 1 omega, 1 ypsilon, 1 omicron, 3 iotas, 1 epsilon, and 3 alphas to get from 39 letters to the required 49 we reach an isopsephy sum of 9999!

To put these new letters into a meaningful combination I tried for quite a while to make them adhere to the following rules:

they need to sound nicely and in tune with the existing vowels when vibrating the whole series
be made up of realistic vowel combinations that already exist in the PGM, and
hypothetically fit into the empty space of the missing papyrus corner.

I eventually succeeded! Here is the chimerically spliced vowel series of the annotation:

αιη αιωι ηωιαη αη ιω ωη αιηουευωαι εαι υο ιαω ιωη οαυ αεη υωυω (9999)

and a photoshopped version of the papyrus itself:

Conclusion

Unfortunately the London Papyrus 46 with the annotation is torn on the edge, so we will never know what it really said but the reference to the scarab papyrus makes sense. Dfinitely more so than repeating the completely randomly chosen "AŌTH ABAŌTH BASYM ISAK SABAŌTH IAŌ" formula.

So, why not use the magically resurrected 49 vowels of the annotation in addition to the famous greatest name that both enumerate to 9999:

AIĒ AIŌI ĒŌIAĒ AĒ IŌ ŌĒ AIĒOYEYŌAI EAI YO IAŌ IŌĒ OAY AEĒ YŌYŌ

CHABRACH PHNESCHĒR PHICHRO PHNYRŌ PHŌCHŌ BŌCH

I guess the only solution to the missing formula is the magic solution: take it, use it, experiment with it, and see where it will take you!

Preisendanz, Karl, "Papyri graecae magicae", Band 1 (Leipzig, 1928) ↩↩
Preisendanz, Karl, "Akephalos. Der kopflose Gott", Beihefte zum Alten Orient 8 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1926) ↩
Someone on /r/occult had an interesting dissection of the 6 word name AŌTH ABRAŌTH BASYM ISAK SABAŌTH IAŌ. ↩
Flowers, Stephen E. "Hermetic Magic: The Postmodern Papyrus of Abaris." Maine: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1995. Archive Copy ↩
Goodwin, Charles Wycliffe, ed. Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work Upon Magic: From a Papyrus in the British Museum. No. 2. Deighton, 1852. Archive Copy ↩
Crowley, Aleister, and Solomon (King of Israel.). Goetia. First Impressions, 1904. Archive Copy ↩
בְּשֵׁם, [b'shem] derived from בְּ־ in; by and שֵׁם name. ↩
Reinhold Merkelbach, Maria Totti, "Abrasax: Ausgewählte Papyri religiösen und magischen Inhalts", Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia, 1991 ↩↩
Betz, ed. by Hans Dieter (1992). "The Greek magical papyri in translation including the Demotic spells" (2nd ed.). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. ↩↩
Kieren Barry, "The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetical Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World", 1999 by Red Wheel Weiser ↩

Die Stele des Ieû

2017-08-15T19:30:00+02:00

Graeco-ägyptisches Exorzimus Ritual aus den Griechischen Zauberpapyri (PGM V 96-173), auch "Headless Rite" oder "Bornless Rite" genannt, von Aleister Crowley in modifizierter Form "Liber Samekh". Der hier abgedruckte Text basiert auf der deutschen Übersetzung von Karl Preisendanz (1)(2). Die "Voces Magicae" wurden aus der englischen Übersetzung von Hans Dieter Betz (bzw. D. E. Aune) (3) ergänzt und ein paar Fehler korrigiert bzw. umformuliert.

Dank auch an Spiro from Triple Snake für Hilfestellung beim Verständnis des altgriechischen Originals.

(Version 1.3 / 29.10.2018)

"Dich rufe ich, den Kopflosen, der geschaffen hat Erde und Himmel, der geschaffen hat Nacht und Tag, dich, der geschaffen hat Licht und Finsternis; du bist OSOR-ONNÔPHRIS (4), den keiner je gesehen.

Du bist IABAS, Du bist IAPÔS, Du hast geschieden das Rechte und das Unrechte, Du hast geschaffen das Weibliche und das Männliche, Du hast gezeigt Saat und Früchte, Du hast gemacht, daß die Menschen einander lieben und hassen. Du hast gezeigt das Feuchte und das Trockene und alle Nahrung.

Ich bin Moses, Dein Prophet, dem Du Deine Geheimnisse mitgeteilt hast, vollzogen von Israel, Erhöre mich!

Ich bin der Bote dieses Pharaos, des OSOR-ONNÔPHRIS (4). Das ist Dein wahrhafter Name, der den Propheten Israels überliefert wurde. Erhöre mich, ARBATHIAÔ REIBET ATHELEBERSÊTH ARA BLATHA ALBEU EBENPHCHI CHITASGOÊ IBAÔTH IAÔ

Erhöre mich und banne diesen Dämon. Ich rufe Dich an, den gewaltigen und unsichtbaren Gott in der Leere des Nichts, AROGOGOROBRAÔ SOCHOU MODORIÔ PHALARCHAÔ OOO. Heiliger Kopfloser, befreiet den NN vom Dämon, von dem er besessen ist, ROUBRIAÔ MARI ODAM BAABNABAÔTH ASS ADÔNAI APHNIAÔ ITHÔLÊTH ABRASAX AEOOY; Mächtiger Kopfloser, befreiet den NN vom Dämon, von dem er besessen ist, MABARRAIO IOEL KOTHA ATHOREBALO ABRAOTH, befreiet den NN, AOTH ABAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO.

Er ist der Herr der Götter, er ist der Herr der bewohnten Welt, er ist es, den die Winde fürchten, er ist es, der durch Befehl seiner Stimme alles geschaffen hat.

Herr, König, Mächtiger, Helfer! Rette die Seele IEOU PYR IOU PYR IAOT IAEO IOOU ABRASAX SABRIAM OO YY EY OO YY ADONAIE, sofort, sofort!

Ich bin ein Bote des Gottes ANLALA LAI GAIA APA DIACHANNA CHORYN. Ich bin der kopflose Dämon, das Augenlicht an den Füßen, der Starke, das unsterbliche Feuer. Ich bin die Wahrheit, ich bin, der es hasst, daß Unrecht geschieht in der Welt. Ich bin, der blitzt und donnert. Ich bin, dessen Schweiß der Regen ist, der auf die Erde fällt, damit er sie befruchte; ich bin es, dessen Mund ganz und gar flammt; ich bin, der erzeugt und vernichtet; ich bin die Gnade des Aion; mein Name ist ein Herz, umwunden von einer Schlange. Komm heraus und begleite mich!"

Schreib die Formel 1) auf ein neues Papyrus und spann es von deiner einen Schläfe zur anderen. In Richtung Norden blickend lies die 6 Namen und sprich:

"Unterwirf mir alle kleinen Dämonen, sodass mir untertan ist jeder Dämon im Himmel und in der Luft und auf der Erde und unter der Erde und auf dem Festland und im Wasser, und auch jeder gegen mich ausgesandte Geist und jede von einem Gott herrührende Geissel."

und alle Daimonen werden dir untertan sein.

Das glückbringende Zeichen ist :>

Die sechs Namen: Chabrach phneschér phichro phnurô phôchô bôch

1) siehe hierzu mein Artikel "The Six Names"

Aié aiôi éôiaé aé iô ôé aiéoueuôai eai uo iaô iôé oau aeé uôuô

Griechische Aussprache

Aié aiôi éôiaé aé iô ôé aiéoueuôai eai uo iaô iôé oau aeé uôuô

Chabrach phneschér phichro phnurô phôchô bôch

(1) Preisendanz, Karl, "Papyri graecae magicae", Band 1 (Leipzig, 1928)

(2) Preisendanz, Karl, "Akephalos. Der kopflose Gott", Beihefte zum Alten Orient 8 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1926)

(3) Betz, ed. by Hans Dieter (1992). "The Greek magical papyri in translation including the Demotic spells" (2nd ed.). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

(4) oder auch "der gute Osiris"