SUBLUNAR SPACE - osiris

Flogging a Dead God

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

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. (1)

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. (2)

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. (2)

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. (3)

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. (4)

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 [...] (5)

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. (6)

[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. (6)

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. (7)

[...] 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. (8)

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. (9)

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. (10)

What is the Head?

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. (11)

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. (12)

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. (12)

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" (13). 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). (14) 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) (15)

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,” (16)

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. (17)

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. (18)

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. (19)

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

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). (20)

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. (20)

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. (20)

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. (21)

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 heart (22)

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. (23)

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. (24)

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. (25)

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.

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":

(1) De Lubicz, RA Schwaller. Symbol and the Symbolic: Ancient Egypt, Science, and the Evolution of Consciousness. Aware Journalism, 1981. p.82.
(2) Doniger, Wendy, Eliade Mircea, and Willard R. Trask. "With a Foreword by Wendy Doniger; Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy." (2004). p. 42.
(3) H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, I, 280-81 (found in (2)).
(4) Bleichsteiner, Robert. L'eglise jaune. Payot, 1937. pg. 222 (found in (2)).
(5) The Cult of Mithras - An Ancient Rite
(6) Naydler, Jeremy. The future of the ancient world: Essays on the history of consciousness. Simon and Schuster, 2009. Chapter 6: Gods and Humans.
(7) 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.
(8) see (7). The Fifteen West-to-South-Wall Texts (Utts. 254–58, 260–63, 267–72).
(9) see (1). pg. 9.
(10) 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.
(11) see (10). Chapter 8: The Soul Incarnate. Body and Soul.
(12) see (6). Chapter 11: The Judaic Path to Monotheism.
(13) 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
(14) Arnott, W. Geoffrey. Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z. Routledge, 2007.
(15) Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek magical papyri in translation, including the Demotic spells. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1996. pg. 147.
(16) Achrati, Ahmed. "Hand and foot symbolisms: From rock art to the Qur'ān." Arabica 50.4 (2003): 464-500. pg. 487.
(17) see (15). pg. 494.
(18) see (11).
(19) see (8). Part 4: Anointing with the Seven Holy Oils (Utts. 72–78, 79, 81).
(20) see (11).
(21) see (6). Chapter 11: Christ and the Gods. The Gods and the Psyche.
(22) see (6). Chapter 6: On the Divinity of the Gods. God and the Gods.
(23) see (10). Chapter 3: Myths of Cosmogenesis. Heliopolis.
(24) Frater Acher. Holy Daimon. Scarlet Imprint. 2018.
(25) Avalon, Arthur. The Serpent Power. Ganesh & Co. Madras. 1950. p.35-36

Akephalos Redux

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

(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. (1)

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.

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 Typhon (2). 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" (3) 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" (4) (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 spells (5) 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)

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" (6). Also Merkelbach/Totti lean towards this interpretation (5).

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. (1)

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)

(1) White, Gordon, "Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits", Scarlet Imprint (VIII. The Mirror of Heaven, X. Children of the Mother of Heaven)

(2) Delatte, Armand L., ""Études sur la magie grecque. V. Akephalos Theos", Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Année 1914 Volume 38 Numéro 1 pp. 189-249

(3) Stratton-Kent, Jake, "The Headless One. A Guide to the Underworld.", Hadean Press, Published in June, 2012. 28 pages.

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

(5) Reinhold Merkelbach, Maria Totti, "Abrasax: Ausgewählte Papyri religiösen und magischen Inhalts", Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia, 1991)

(6) Dornseiff, Franz, "Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie"

(7) 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.

Tail of the Dragon

2017-09-01T19:30:00+02:00

I returned to the Croatian island of Pag for a job - exactly one year after my serpent dream that sent me on this journey of enchantment. I was very excited, because I had decided to celebrate this anniversary with a series of self initiation rituals during the New Moon that was also a solar eclipse. In the weeks prior to this trip I had researched, translated and practiced a number of magical texts and constructed two rituals to be done. One in the waning phase of the New Moon, the other one in the waxing phase.

Monday

I chose the hour of Mercury on the day of the Moon as the beginning of the ritual and it's end in the following hour of the Moon. The location was to be the highest elevation point on the island, a hill called Sveti Vid (Saint Vitus) with a small church ruin on the top and a cement pillar next to it, marking the summit.

After approximately 20 hours of fasting and a short ritual shower at home I took a rented scooter to Kolan, the village next to the hill, and hiked for around an hour ascending across rocky desert and under burning hot August sun until I reached the summit. I encountered a large group of German teenagers and several tourists up there and I patiently waited until they finally left and had descended far enough for me to have enough privacy for my ritual.

First I drew the seals of the Four Kings to the corresponding sides of the pillar, lit a stick of frankincense in front of the wooden virgin Mary statue inside the abandoned chapel and then I circled the whole summit area clockwise, drawing an "astral" circle around it while simply banishing by repeatedly chanting "Hekas, Hekas, Este Bebeloi!"

Then I did a consecration spell for this created circular temple and to the spirit of fire (incense) and opened the ritual with planetary prayers to the Moon and to Mercury and then followed up by reciting the Orphic hymns to Selene (moon), Helios (sun) and Protogonos (connects to the Headless One quite nicely).

Now came the main part: the Headless Rite (Gordon White's Chaos Protocols version). I lit another stick of incense and as the six names to be spoken towards North I used the Ephesia Grammata, as they seemed more powerful to me than the classic choice of names and due to their meaning that seemed fitting to this day of the solar eclipse. I transitioned directly into the invocation of the Four Kings with offerings of rum and pieces of my burek lunch to the corresponding directions.

At this point I took a break and wandered around in silence and contemplation. I felt the sun burning from above and wind in my hair and was filled with a feeling of excitement and empowerment. There was a small bird of prey circling around the summit. I like to think it was a swift.

I closed with praises and thanks ("license of departure") addressed to each of the Four Kings and to whatever spirits present and sat down in the shade on the northern side of the chapel to enjoy my lunch.

The descend was more difficult than expected, because the sun was shining directly into my face and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of exhaustion. When I arrived back home I noticed my face and especially nose were quite sunburnt.

Tuesday

This time I did another hike into a small valley that I had already discovered the year before. Today I was a bit smarter than yesterday and wore a linen shirt as a kufiya over my head to have better protection from the sun. In the beautiful valley I chose a distinguished rock formation as my temple, climbed it, lit a stick of frankincense and did a very simple consecration and banishing spell. As this ritual was meant to take place in honour of Mars, the ruler of my zodiac sun sign as well as of the day and hour of my birth I chose also the hour of Mars on this Martian day.

I opened with the planetary prayer to Mars and two Orphic hymns to Ares and then proceeded with the lengthy but very powerful instruction for recitation of the heptagram (PGM XIII, 762ff), followed up by the Headless Rite, again using the Ephesia Grammata as the six names formula. After some moments of meditation I left the temple space without any closure and hiked back to the road where my scooter was waiting.

Thursday

I have this job on Pag every year, so I've had the chance in the past to explore the island thoroughly. My favorite spot is a very rocky desert area in the northeast and I went hiking there a few times. Last year I wanted to find out more about this area and I researched a bit online. I was utterly terrified to find out that this exact spot used to be the site of a concentration camp during the time Croatia was a Nazi puppet state ruled by the fascist revolutionary organisation "Ustaše". A couple of thousand Jews, Serbs and antifascists have been murdered there and thrown into the sea or buried under the rocks. The most appaling part about this is that there is not a single sign or piece of information about this on the island itself, nobody wants to talk about it or simply denies it has ever happened. This has caused me several sleepless nights throughout the last year and I wanted to visit the dead on this visit to spend some time with them in contemplation and remembrance.

To reach the area where the "Slana" camp used to be you have to take a boat across Pag bay or hike for one to two hours from the village of Metajna across undeveloped rocky wasteland. I did the latter and in the August heat this was a quite demanding task. When I had eventually made it to Slana bay, I walked by a handful of tourists on the beach who had arrived by boat, enjoying themselves while giving me a strange look, obviously surprised to see me arrive on foot covered in my kufiya. I continued uphill to the valley where the camps used to be.

Someone had erected a wooden cross near the site, without any sign. I don't remember having seen it last year. I walked up to it and lit an incense stick, poured a bit of the spring water I had brought as an offering near the base of the cross and spontaneously recited the Lord's Prayer (something I haven't uttered since my confirmation in early teenage years) in honour of the Serbs and antifascists who had been murdered here.

A bit downhill from the cross, I could see a little thorny tree sticking out of the dry rocks. I walked towards it and it was some kind of thistle, maybe half a meter high. It made me smile - such a rugged and courageous plant. It seemed very appropriate as a symbol of life in all this barren rocky wasteland with it's hidden history of torture and death, so I decided to sit down next to it. I said a prayer for the ancestors and mighty dead and added some impromptu things I wanted to say. I emptied the remaining spring water at the base of the bush, as an offering to all the Jews who had suffered and been killed here and I put one of those "eternal" candles used on cemeteries next to it in memory of all the victims of this valley.

Usually there is a lot of wind blowing through the valley carrying all kinds of sounds with it, of jet-skis and the techno party-boats, bird- and sheep-sounds. But the moment after I prayed next to the thorny bush, the whole valley suddenly seemed to have become dead silent for a couple of endless seconds. It gave me shivers and I had the strange feeling of being "watched".

The hike back to Metajna went faster than expected and I drove back home, completely exhausted.

UPG Notes:

Besides feeling "empowered" and "magicky" during the rituals on Monday and Tuesday I didn't have any direct "results" from doing them. Actually, I didn't even expect any, since my work in Croatia was in the context of a multiday electronic music event each night from 11 until 6 followed by short and not too good stretches of almost dreamless sleep, which is not really the best mental or "spiritual" condition to be in. In addition I didn't feel fully comfortable doing the ritual on top of Sveti Vid mountain, because I was constantly paranoid that tourists might pop up any second.

One thing I noticed though, already from Monday evening on throughout the whole week was that people suddenly seemed way more "courteous" towards me than usual. I consider myself a relatively shy person that likes to be more in the background of things, so I noticed it quite immediately that my "popularity" was higher than usual. Not sure if that's just a psychological side-effect of feeling more "empowered" or of the rituals themselves.

The most spiritually intense moment of this trip was that very quiet and dense moment at Slana bay after my offerings and prayer.

I will patiently wait and see if there will be any events or experiences that I can trace back to these rituals. Solar eclipses are supposed to have an astrological "afterglow" of around 6 months, so I am not in a hurry.

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

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

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.

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

Chabrach phneschér phichro phnurô phôchô bôch

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·

(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"

Opus Apus

2017-07-26T18:00:00+02:00

I was visiting my parents over the weekend in my hometown together with my wife and daughter for my mom's birthday. We spent the afternoon doing a picnic at a beautiful green clearing on one of the foresty hills just out of town and had an extended dinner out on the terrace at my parents house. Right after dinner my dad got stung into his upper lip by a wasp while taking a sip of his wine. It was the first time in the 74 years of his life that he got stung by an insect. But this was just the beginning of weirdness to come.

The next morning dad asked me to come to the street in front of the house with him. He found a bird in the middle of the road that looked hurt and he didn't know what to do with it. It was quite small, a bit larger than a sparrow and with a tiny hooked beak like of an owl. I gently took the animal with a paper towel and brought it to our back yard for further investigation. According to its beak shape, feather color and surprisingly short legs it was a young swift (apus apus). I called an animal rescue number and did a bit of online research and found out that swifts are a type of bird of prey that spends most of its life in the air - up to ten months straight. Their legs are too short for them to be able to easily take off from the ground. Dad kept telling me to put it back to the street "because it will die anyway" which I refused to do and I waited for my sister to arrive and fed some water to the poor bird.

After some more phone-calls to vets by my sister (it was Sunday and no animal shelter was open) and attempts to feed it some flies and more water we put the swift into a cardboard box and put it in a dark and quiet place. My sister had arranged to bring it to some "lady specialized in caring for wild birds" in the evening.

In the early afternoon we all went for a walk into the forest up on the hill in walking distance from where my parents live. I felt oddly anxious when we left the house and my skin felt weirdly sensitive but i didn't worry too much about it. We reached the top of the hill where the forest opens up to beautiful farmland with a few grazing cows and ancient apple and pear trees. I had instant memories of feeding white horses with clover and fruits as a child. We walked past a group of young cows and a beautiful bull with a ring through his nose. I had never noticed cows can be so beautiful.

As we started heading back downhill I started to feel weak and lightheaded and I had to sit down several times to not faint. I told the others I needed a moment alone and they continued walking home. I sat on a bench next to the footpath and closed my eyes. The sound of wind rustling the leaves in the trees was quite meditative and I felt like my head wad humming from the inside and I became a bit dizzy. I slowly walked back home thinking that I'd need to do something about my blood pressure.

At home I had a coffee and a piece of cake and felt slightly better until a sudden very heavy tiredness overcame me and forced me to lie down. That's when I felt the fever taking over.

In a half awake and half asleep state, feeling hot blood pumping through my head the nightmarish visions crept in from the edges. Scenes of a medieval dungeon that seemed too familiar.

As a child around seven or eight years old I remember I watched a TV show that had caught my attention randomly zapping around after school. It was a story in a medieval setting told from the point of view of a prisoner in a dungeon. He gets visited by a guard handing him food and another time by a priest praying with him. He is being told that he will be picked up at six o'clock. In the last scene the church bells toll six and the narrator is being dragged through the dungeon hallway into the open where an executioner with an axe is waiting on a scaffold. Screaming and fighting he is beimg decapitated — all shown from his point of view.

I was terrified by what I had watched and quite traumatised. For a quite long time (years?) I had an irrational fear of "six o'clock" to a point where I didn't want to go to bed or be awake or wake up around that time. Fortunately this obsessive anxiety faded in my early teens. I never thought about it again for decades until now…

…lying in bed, shaken by waves of fever, I had a vision of this last scene from my childhood nightmare. I was being dragged through the same hallway and half awake I heard the church bells through the window toll six o'clock for real and I was in a raging fear. I cringed, sweating in my bed as I was dragged up to the scaffold where the executioner was waiting. My visions slowed down and started looping repetitively. A staccato of images, the axe being raised. I screamed in my dream and as the images repeated themselves faster and faster to an infinitely blurry freeze-frame the fear suddenly faded and I knew I had to let go. I knew I had to give in and embrace death. It was an almost joyful moment of peace and as I was losing my head the vision suddenly changed and I saw a bird of prey rising up in slow motion. It was a swift spreading its wings, gliding towards me, staring me in the eyes. I felt blissful and I heard and saw the words around me:

I AM HORUS!

…I heard the front door of the house slam shut and woke up. I was sweating. I knew immediately that my sister had just left the house with the cardboard box sheltering the swift bird to bring him to the animal lady. The last sound of the church bells faded and I sat in bed feeling nothing but awe. Horus? Why Horus?

Sceptical sidenote:

I have been researching about "Akephalos" in the "Stele of Jeu" text from the PGM V some weeks ago and what it has to do with Osiris (but no mention of Horus). And yes there is a sub-species of Apus Apus called "Apus Horus" but I didn't read much into it until after this experience because it seemed irrelevant at that point for my research about helping the poor bird. Was it all my fever boiled brain wildly associating things as the clock tolled six? (although i didn't know it was six until after the dream)

Synchronicities:

reading later about Apus Horus revealed that it doesn't build its own nest but dwells in nests built by bee-eaters!
reading later about the Osiris myth revealed that after Set killed and dismembered Osiris and after Osiris came back to life with the help of Isis to create their son Horus he went to the underworld forever. But he appears in this world in different forms. One of them is a young bull.
the night after this experience I had fever with crazy dreams too. But nothing even close to the visions before. The next morning I felt very good but I suddenly strained my neck and was suffering a lot of pain in the back of my neck for two days.
I later learned by coincidence that the day I had this vision was the 23rd of July, which marks this year's heliacal rise of Sirius. In Ancient Egypt this event marked the start of a new 360 days long year after five epigomenal days of celebrations of the birth of Nut's children Osiris, Set, Horus the Elder, Isis and Nephthys.