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Religious Pron - The Egyptian View of the Soul

May 18, 2023, 3:00 PM

Last time we took a quick look at the concept of the soul. It’s a real mystery, and we just don’t know much about it.

Maybe, but that’s about all we agree on, if that. The French theologian John Calvin, of predestination and ‘elected ones’ fame, thought that souls were created and just kept on “living.” They were immortal but not eternal, since they had a creation point but no end point.

JC

On the other hand, William Tyndale, of the Tyndale Bible fame, felt the soul died when the physical body died. Like any O.G. Protestant, he could get pretty fiery when debating Catholics:

“And you [Catholics], in putting departed souls in heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the very arguments of Christ and Paul about resurrection. If the souls already be in heaven… then what need is there of the resurrection?”

An interesting thought. But speaking of fiery, Tyndale ended up strangled and burned at the stake for those very same thoughts. Before he died though, he was one of the first to translate the Bible into English, in about 1526, just a few years after the New World was found.

It’s a little tight around the collar…

One of the things that got Tyndale into trouble was that he felt that the word for “church” was interchangeable with the word for “congregation.” Well, if you were an official priest in charge of the Holy Word, the idea that any little group could get together and worship whenever they wanted to was simply unacceptable. So Tyndale had to fry.

Tyndale, unplugged, unarmed, and uncooked

Tyndale could turn a phrase, though. Tons of common phrases in today’s Bibles came from Tyndale: ”the powers that be,” “my brother’s keeper,” “seek and ye shall find,” and “salt of the earth,” all came from Tyndale’s translations.

So be careful. Salt, and thought, can be dangerous things. Imagine if we thought of sin and the soul like Tyndale, Pelagius, and Tertullian did, instead of how Calvin, Augustine and Jerome did.

Strange, huh?

We’d be a bunch of hardcore monks with total free-will, no need for grace, whose souls were given to us my both mom and dad and that died when we did. That’s strange.

Instead, we skip the monastery lifestyle and rely on grace, with our God-given souls that last forever. A much more casual and comfy environment in which to contemplate the meaning of it all.

In contrast to Calvin’s immortal soul, and Tyndale’s view that the soul died and had to be resurrected, Martin Luther felt that the soul “slept” when the body died, and was re-awakened during Judgement. So yet a third way to look at the soul. He said of the Pope and the Catholic teaching of purgatory:

“the idea that the ‘soul is immortal’ is among the endless monstrosities in that Roman dunghill.”

Martin! Where are your manners?! Luther also wrote: “It is probable, in my opinion, that, with very few exceptions indeed, the dead sleep till the day of judgment.” And he called on the wisdom of Solomon himself to explain death:

“Solomon judges that the dead are asleep and feel nothing at all. Thus after death the soul goes to its bedchamber and to its peace… and God preserves the awakening soul.”

Clear enough.

And on the other side of the world, some Hindus think we are all just flat crazy over here. Everyone knows that just as each and every leaf is just one small part of a tree, each of us is simply one small part of the universal soul, called Brahman.

Look, it’s me! I’m a stand-alone, individual self and soul disconnected from the rest of the universe. My ego told me so.

So like I said. A lot of views floating around out there. But this time, we’ll take a look at one of the coolest. The Egyptian concept of the soul.

Last time we started with the Khet, which is your physical body. Here are some examples to refresh your memory.

As I mentioned before, to the ancient Egyptians, your soul was a team of 7 or 8 entities all working together to make you. And that didn’t include support staff.

Like these guys. Here, a group of sperm prepare to “go in hot,” in a carefully choreographed ejection sequence, closely monitored from the control room in the male testes.

Sperm queued up in the launch area.

Understandable concern about the mission. The rumor is that only one will get through.

All systems GO!

The moment of truth…

Success!!! Deez Nuts do it again!

Khets and biological support staff aside, the first part of the actual Egyptian soul was the Ba, which was kind of your personality, or your outward self. And just like your reputation lives on after you die, so did your Ba. In fact, people far away might have heard of you without ever even meeting you. That’s because your Ba went to visit them. Your reputation can spread without you having to go anywhere, you see. Now you know how that happens. Science!

An Egyptian Ba comes in for a landing after spreading his owner’s reputation far and wide.

Me, myself, and Ba. You’ve probably heard the term “Look yourself in the mirror?” Well, here you go.

The second important part of your soul was the Ka, or your life essence. Everything that’s alive has a Ka. Trees, people, even dogs.

Good boy!

That’s a good Ka!

But how did you get your Ka, your life force? Well, forget all that stork delivering babies mythology. Every Egyptian knew that babies were made when the god Khnum threw them like clay on his potter’s wheel, put them in mommy’s tummy, and then the goddess Meskhenet breathed their Ka into them at the moment of birth. So now you know how people are made, too.

It’s not terribly unlike Genesis 2:7 “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Who knew clay could be so sexy?

In addition to being your life force, your Ka is also like a battery. It needs recharging. That’s why there’s food in Pyramids and Tombs. So the Ka can eat after your Khet dies. Not literally eat of course, that would be silly. The Ka absorbs the energy from the food through magic. Science, again.

Can I interest you in a 5000-year-old Tomb, stone pizza?

Or some petrified fruit? It’s rich in minerals!

Once the Ba and the Ka were released from your corpse via the Ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth, they merged to create your Akh, or your spirit body. That’s the part that can travel to the underworld and beyond. As Spell 474 of the Pyramid Texts clarifies, "the Akh belongs to heaven, the corpse to earth.” Simple enough.

It will be your Akh that enjoys eternity, while your mummy sits rotting in a tomb, so don’t lose it!

Dust to dust…except your Akh!

Fortunately, the Akh wasn’t trapped in the spirit world. It could send an emissary to pester the living called the Sah. Sahs are like the messenger angels of the Hebrew God Yahweh. Except they deliver bad messages in bad dreams. Here, a guy complains that his ex-wife’s Sah is nagging the hell out of him from the grave. So he begs and pleads for the gods to get his ex-wife off his back. Some things never change.

Silence, woman! Don’t you EVER shut up?

But the Ba, the Ka, the Akh, and the Sah only 4 parts of your eternal soul. There are still 4 more to go!

The Ib is also extremely important. That’s your spiritual heart, or your morality. You’ll weigh that against a feather to see if you get eternal bliss or utter obliteration in the afterlife. That’s right. There’s a test to get into the afterlife.

It’s literally the trial of your life. That’s you, or your Akh, rather, on the left, in your snazzy white skirt. Your Ba and Ka are up above you, floating over your head.
Your heart is on the scale, being weighed against the Feather of Maat, the God of Justice. Anubis, your jackal-faced guide, is on his knees escorting you through the process. Thoth, the god of writing and records, is on the right, putting it all in your Permanent Record, young man!

So DON’T have a heavy heart when you have to take your exam! Today we have Maternity tests. In ancient Egypt, they had Eternity tests. Yes, I’ll be here all week.

Thanks, David. The sixth, yes sixth part of your soul was secret name, or your Ren. It was also a very important, sort of like with Rumplestiltskin. Your Ren was just between you and your god, and bad things happened if it became public knowledge. Like having your secret pron site passwords doxed all over the internet.

And then there was your Sechem, which might be your luck, but no one is quite sure. It’s sort of the appendix of your spiritual self. Since it’s there you might need it, but no one knows exactly why. But if it is luck, you’ll want every little bit.

And finally, there’s your Shut, or your shadow. Like Peter Pan found out, it’s always hooked to your heel anyhow, so it’s not like you could get rid of it even if you wanted to. And apparently it fights demons or something in the afterlife.

Egyptian funerary spells say "My shadow will not be defeated." That sounds both ominous and handy, so you might want to hold on to your Shut, too. The eighth and last part of your soul.

So to recap the Egyptian soul, there’s your:

1) Ba (your Personality)
2) Ka (your Life Force)

3) Which together create your Akh (your Spirit Body)
4) and your Sah (your Nightmare maker for ex-spouses)

All of which accompany your:

5) Ib (your Heart/Morality)
6) Ren (your Name)
7) Sechem (your Luck?)
8) and Shut (your Shadow)

on their journey to the underworld. So let’s hear it for team YOU!

And all that packed into one tight little Khet.

That’s a lot to take in.
Now that we have all the tools for the afterlife, next time we’ll go get ourselves judged! And like I said, it’s not as simple as just greeting St.Peter at the Pearly Gates for an entry pass.

There’s gonna be a test, for your very existence. So study up in your Egyptian Book of the Dead till next time!

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It's a beautiful morning, but why is the patio wet?
I don't know, must have rained overnight.
Aha, rain of the gaps ...

... but here goes a speculation anyway. Speculation of the gaps, maybe. Maybe the reason a soul cannot be imagined is that it is a thing that is from, and belongs in, a place that is not here. Wherever the Creator is. Call that 'eternity'. We can't know anything about what happens there. Jesus's resurrected body was like ours, but also wasn't. Does that mean Jesus, in eternity today, is in that physical-but-different body? No. But maybe. Can't say. No way to even imagine it. All we can do is attach our physically restricted concepts to 'soul', so we all naturally develop different ideas about it, all wrong, but maybe all a little bit right.

When John was shown eternity for just a moment, and then tried to describe it, he said several times (paraphrase), "There are no words for what I saw, but if I have to use words, it was something like this." Maybe 'soul' is like that.

As 88 implied, there is something about the idea of a creation, death and birth of a soul a Christian cannot explain. We who remain in rebellion will live in our choice, eternally apart from him, but he also told Nic, "You must be born again." How can both of those be true? That's what Nic asked. We who have experienced it cannot explain it. It is something that is not the same as self awareness, but none of us can go beyond that.

You are right. An actual street of actual gold would be a huge disappointment, not because of what it is, but because it looks like this world. I don't have any expectations of what eternity is (except for something I will describe only in tmail), except that it not be anything like this world. But again, "not like" doesn't mean physical, so we're back to that.

Religious Pron - The Egyptian View of the Soul

Clears everything up. Thank you.

Re: Clears everything up. Thank you.

What is your soul to you?

Re: What is your soul to you?

This might be this:

Re: This might be this:

Re: This might be this:

Nah, we'll make fun anyway ;P***

Re: This might be this:

Re: What is your soul to you?

Re: What is your soul to you?

ME!***

Re: ME!***

Re: ME!***

When man imagines God we frame Him in our image.

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