#primeval mound

[asinusrufus]

Ptah, the Cosmocrator / Memphite Triad (WiP)

[ascendingaeons]

On the Symbolism of the Ogdoad

It's been my experience that buried underneath patterns, beliefs, and interpretations there are core truths. The Greeks called them Forms or First Principles, the Egyptians knew them as the Netjeru, among the Teutons they were the Runes, and to the Hebrews they were the Sefirot. Based on my own experiences I am of the firm belief that these Principles are, in a sense, animated and alive. Being able to hear and see them takes time and sacrifice. I can say it feels like a blessing to reach out and touch even one of them.

The Netjeru are forces of nature within the spectrum of Cosmos and Chaos. They are embodied within both the physical universe and the human psyche. They are both primordial and universal, scientific and spiritual. The nature of their involvement with both objective and subjective reality far transcends that of third-dimensional human beings. The Egyptian word netjer or neter was carried on through the ages as the Coptic noute, the Latin natura, and finally the English nature.

In Egyptian cosmology, the Ogdoad were four pairs of Netjers conceptualized to represent different aspects of the primeval chaos. They were at the heart of the Hermopolitan cosmology. They were believed responsible for the inundation of the Nile and the rising of the sun. The forces of chaos were an essential part of the cosmic circuit. They were first mentioned in religious texts during the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 B.C.E.). The original mound of creation (depicted as the Benben stone, a lotus flower containing the child Ra, or the child Ra hatching from the cosmic egg) was said to rise from the chaotic waters. Ra represents both the physical sun but also the creative principle as a whole. The names of the Ogdoad are:

Nun and Naunet (Primeval Ocean and Primeval Sky)

Kek and Kauket (Obscurity and Illumination)

Amun and Amunet (the Hidden One and the Revealed One)

Heh and Hauhet (Infinity and Boundaries)

The males were depicted as frogs or frog-headed men (as very prolific animals, frogs symbolize new life) whereas the females were serpents or serpent-headed women (often portrayed as spirals, serpents symbolize the latent creative force in the universe). The Egyptians chose well to use these animals as representations of the pre-creation state, thinking they would be comfortable in the primeval ooze. The Ogdoad are equivalent to the four fundamental interactions of the universe (the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, gravity, and electromagnetism).

Nun was the primeval ocean and His consort Naunet was the sky above it. In the pre-creation state Nun was the chaotic primeval matter and Naunet was the primeval space. In the created universe Nun was what the Egyptians believed to be the watery firmament surrounding the world, similar to the Greek titan Okeanus, and in older texts, Naunet became the anti-sky which Ra must traverse every night in the Duat.

Kek and Kauket represented the awakening of the Universal Mind from the darkness enveloping the primeval ocean. Egyptians associated night with the chaotic energies and forces. Kek and Kauket were known as "the bringer-in of the light" and "the bringer-in of the night", respectively, indicating both their dominion over the hours of twilight and the dual-spiral nature of consciousness. Kek is that which is perpetually beyond the reach of the intellect and Kauket is the embodiment of continually pushing back barriers—of Opening the Way.

Amun and Amunet were Wind and Air, the dynamic elements of chaos. Creation cannot be explained from within, only from without, i.e. the Creator and the created universe are not one and the same. There must be an external force underlying creative efforts. This has been known by many cultures as “the breath of life” which animates inert or dead matter. The Egyptians knew this force as Amun, the Netjer of wind also known as the Hidden One. Amun represents the occult force underlying creation.

Heh and Hauhet symbolized the dynamic relationship between Matter and Spirit. One knows a compounded horizon, the other bears the limitless expanse of the primeval waters, knowing neither the impression of space nor time.

Most ancient cultures (as well as some that survive to this day) lived by the understanding of the cyclicality of nature, which can be observed within the succession of seasons. The universe was perceived as dynamic and animated rather than mechanistic and dead. The wisdom that many these days perceive as baseless or quaint was the result of centuries spent working the earth and observing the sky. The ancients developed mystery plays to illustrate the cosmic dance, the eternal conflict between the forces of cosmos and chaos. The mystery plays, rites, and festivals were more than just religious affairs to the ancients; they were acts of involvement with the cosmic crisis (often portrayed by the disappearance and rebirth of the sun).

The sun symbolizes cosmic order. The word "order" often sounds sterile and mechanistic but, rather, is taken to mean balance or regulation. The glaring heat of summer and the brittle cold of winter symbolically contributes to the death of the earth. From these chaotic seasons come longer days, renewed vegetation, and new generations of fauna, the cyclicality of creation playing out on the cosmic stage. Should the forces of either cosmos or chaos destroy the other, the outcome will be the same regardless of the victor. The creative principle involves a continuance of transformation through creation and destruction—an alchemy if you will. This has been depicted by many cultures as the world serpent.

The bringing of order and definition to the primeval state was not a sudden or random event but one subject to a greater form of law. The Egyptians knew this as Ma'at, the Greeks as Logos, the Teutons as Ørlög, the Hindus as Ṛta, the Zoroastrians as Asha, and the Lakota peoples as Wakan Tanka or the Great Mystery. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is referred to as the Word of God. Creation is not something that can be explained from within, but only from outside of it or beyond its scope; whence comes the concept of the occult or hidden force underlying creation. This is not something I consider to be a god necessarily but rather an emanation, a permeating force or principle that underlies objective existence. In the microcosm, this would be comparable to the notion of vitality or the animating principle.

Creation is an emanating, dynamic, and ongoing act as opposed to a singular, decisive act. It is the process by which undifferentiated matter, energy, and consciousness are brought to order and definition. It is the transition from subjective being to objective being, from the unconscious to the conscious. In human terms, it is the transition from an unconscious state to one of awareness. It is not the bringing forth of something out of nothing. The necessary elements already exist and the act itself is the forming and re-purposing of chaotic matter or energy into something new. To a person rousing from active sleep, their dream could be considered incredibly real even though it was the product of their unconscious mind attempting to categorize the experiences of the previous day.

Creation is inherently cyclical, continuous, and multidimensional. The experience of it is, by its very nature, transcendental (i.e. beyond oneself). The universe is not static. It is evolving on every scale and in every aspect, very much animated and alive. One of the core Hermetic teachings is that everything in the universe is composed of energy vibrating at an infinite range of frequencies, all of which are susceptible to mental influence.

Inherent in this dynamic process is the reconciliation of opposites, a practical example of which can be found in the interaction between matter and antimatter. The majority of the universe is comprised of plasma with matter and antimatter distributed throughout. When matter (e.g. a negatively-charged electron) and antimatter (a positively-charged positron) collide, they produce a violent reaction—the conversion of matter to energy in the form of an explosion. In doing so, the particles and antiparticles negate each other and return to zero mass with their total energy being redistributed into the surrounding space, transformed into gamma radiation. The universe wastes nothing.

This process was defined philosophically as the dialectic Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis and portrayed allegorically as Unity-Scission-Reconciliation. This dialectic is observable in nature as the changing of seasons, the life cycles of flora, and the behavior of fauna. It manifests recurrently in human lives as the intricacies of relationships and personal growth, the outreaching of generations, and the evolution of customs, trends, and technology.

The Ancient Egyptians had a way of expressing such relationships and interactions. This was achieved by grouping the Netjeru into dyads, triads, tetrads, etc. These groupings were formulaic, illustrating the interaction between principal forces. For example:

Nun-Ptah-Atum

Nun: undifferentiated matter/energy

Ptah: converting potentia to dunamis

Atum: self-begotten awareness

This triad embodies the scientific basis of Creation in which the undifferentiated, inert state of matter and energy come into being as the physical universe. The Egyptians portrayed the transformative catalyst as Ptah, the patron Netjer of artisans. Ptah is portrayed with His body bound in cloth (representing the dense state of matter, the concealed potentiality underlying creation), often standing on a pedestal or seated on a throne (representing His mastery over universal laws). His hands and head are uncovered (indicating the capacity for action, expression, and intent) and He is often seen holding a staff combining the ankh, was, and djed (symbols of life, sovereignty, and stability).

I am writing a book that focuses on Nun and will occasionally post snippets of it here. Nun is one of the Netjers that I work with and I’ll be writing more about that in my Relationships With The Netjeru series. You would be surprised by the wisdom and friendship to be found in obscure forces of creation.

[dwellerinthelibrary]

Osiris on the side of the yellow coffin of Inpehefnakht. The "double staircase" represents the primeval mound that rose from the waters of Nun.

Where: British Museum

When: Third Intermediate Period, 21st Dynasty

[nogetron]

Nu, Egyptian embodiment of the chaotic waters. The first of the gods, it’s been ever present throughout time, a permanent aspect of reality. For countless millennia, Nu’s waters rested without action, but suddenly the waters stirred and out arose the Benben, the first mound of land. Lying on top of the Benben laid a lotus flower, the flower bloomed, revealing the newborn Ra. Along with Ra emerged the serpent of Chaos: Apep. Nu’s waters encapsulated the world Ra had sculpted, surrounding it like a bubble. Nu remained detached from creation, watching it from afar. However Nu would provide Ra with their otherworldly wisdom, in one instance when Ra lost the worship of his followers Nu gave him the advice to tear out his eye, which when Ra followed transformed into the goddess Sekhmet. Nu upholds Ra’s solar bark all through out its journey across the sky, traversing the sea of chaos that surrounds the universe.

Nu’s presence within Egyptian religion is deeply rooted, as the vast majority of creation myths in ancient Egypt centered around and greatly featured Nu, with the only exception being in Memphis where they were replaced with Ptah. In Heliopolis, Nu was split into eight deities who formed the Ogdoad, the pantheon who embodied the primordial waters. Nu represents the primordial chaos, an archetype found in many other gods, such as the Chinese Hundun, the Sumerian Nammu, the Mesopotamian Tiamat, and the Irish Danu. The concept of Nu may have developed into Asherah, with both representing the primordial waters of chaos. The primordial waters is a very ubiquitous concept, with it being found in Hinduism, Abrahamic religions, Mongolian mythology, Hawaiian mythology among many others. Viewing this primeval void as an ocean is nigh universal across the earth, you’d be hard pressed to find a creation myth without a mention of primeval waters.

[rafent]

✦ 𝐆𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐏𝐀𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑 ✧

* dancer mastery drabble ( fell xenologue spoilers )

Because Rafal hadn’t the shoes, because Rafal hadn’t the lessons, because Rafal wasn't like them, he wasn't desired at the sides of the other children, unneeded to join their vainglorious black forms on the front lines. When it was learned that he could not transform, that his greatest talents sat only in raising a few nasty spells, his role was decided. Grouped with all the other nobody-sons and nobody-daughters of Sombron per expectation.

"There's a survivor here, failure. Clean it up."

". . .I was getting to him. You don't have to tell me."

Rafal stuck his stiletto into a gurgling throat, abhorrently practiced.

There was no satisfaction in picking up after the clutter of older, stronger siblings and their war paths imperfectly paved. Bodies half-ended, half-sundered, or crushed below the waist and not around the head, vitals and organs missed. Still breathing. In all such ways, Failures performed as expected, hunched to the thankless grunt work of ending foes that were mortally wounded. Snipping threads and draining veins on the battlefield in order to avail quicker of their Corrupted transformations.

Humans, Divine Dragons, and even other Fell Dragons. The distinction of the reaping act didn't matter. Even if Rafal should die he would be reanimated, too. As beasts did not squander the nutrients of their prey from brain to bone, for the Fell kind there was no waste in this either. His dagger moved again, vertical, sometimes horizontal from ear-to-ear. The skin yielding, his dreams flowering in the spilled red.

Imperishable labor for the brood it was, but Rafal wanted for more. Rafal was destined for more. He believed this, even as his unmoving feet and stationary hands turned blue from indolence where backlights failed to reach. Unable to taste combat, action, stage, applause though he yearned endlessly for that spotlight too. That connection, that praise, that dragonstone of his wildest dreams.

That dance.

...

“The sight of your form burns my eyes.” . . .what do you mean you can’t transform?

“You’d step all over my toes!” —the way that you are, it isn’t like the rest of us.

“You’re off-rhythm.” failure. failure. failure. 

For centuries, Rafal watched and watched only. A danseur in unending reserve seated behind the tape of action - a wanting fell son, a lacking failed son. None would make allowances for a creature of dearth; of such freakish, loathsome eccentricity as a Fell Dragon more human than dragon, more weak than strong. Born different than the rest of them and made for different things, too.

I can’t with you, he traced his lament over the mound that marked another child who had succeeded only in his failure. Not with Nil, gone too soon,

. . .but perhaps, just perhaps, with her.

So it was. So it could not help but be. Engraved by his inadequacy felt as old as primeval time, his want so equally measured, the least of Sombron's children wanted it the greatest. To move as all sons and daughters of Fell Dragons did dauntlessly, born and killed and made and unmade to do. When the time came, he knew the steps of the routine like he'd learned them himself. Those cues of the symphony for every day he’d listened through the walls, the chest-rattling breath and wingbeats that had what was - should have been - his. The mortal duel between halves, consoled only by one spelled superior over the other.

Revanche tethered to one hand, the other raised for balance like an empty chalice filled only by Nel’s hand, her blood, his heart, his jealousy, he sought to imitate what he had seen even as one question surfaced. Was it the dance he wanted for or the partner he dreamed would make him whole?

He knew the answer but still his feet dragged to position; unquestioning of the motions. Hovered aloft the ground on crossed strings too tangled, unable to undo, left only to deepen, and only to do.

Because Rafal had the shoes now. Scales white and pink and brimming - pearlescent fangs like batons shaved from moonlight, wings to guide the devil's spins, lightning breath spilling operatic from fortified jaws. Stronger, better, bigger than anyone who would ever come before and after him.

Because Rafal had the lessons now. A twin at last to perfect his rhythm, beat, and pirouette. Emblems, seven in their array, used, tapped into, and cast aside like the husks of soft treats to feed this final masquerade. Brothers and sisters all graduated from a bloodstained stage he'd curated now only for two.

Because Rafal would dance now.

“At last, Father. . .I have finally succeeded.”

[projectlovecraft]

There in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. It was that of a man clad in a skullcap and long mediaeval tunic of dark color. His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible and intense black hue, and of incredible profusion. His forehead, high beyond the usual dimensions; his cheeks, deep-sunken and heavily lined with wrinkles; and his hands, long, claw-like, and gnarled, were of such a deathly, marble-like whiteness as I have never elsewhere seen in man. His figure, lean to the proportions of a skeleton, was strangely bent and almost lost within the voluminous folds of his peculiar garment. But strangest of all were his eyes, twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred, and rooting me to the spot whereon I stood. Title and author: The Alchemist, a Gothic horror tale by H. P. Lovecraft (1908) Plot: The narrator, Antoine, is the last descendant of a noble family cursed by a sorcerer named Charles Le Sorcier, who swore revenge for the death of his father Michel Mauvais2. Antoine discovers that Charles still lives thanks to an elixir of eternal life, and that he is responsible for the premature deaths of his ancestors. Antoine confronts Charles in a subterranean chamber of the castle, where he reveals his secret and tries to kill him with a poison3. Antoine manages to escape but is horrified to hear Charles say that he is the very sorcerer who cursed his family six centuries ago. Theme: The tale explores themes such as the hereditary curse, the supernatural revenge, alchemy, and cosmic horror. Style: The tale is written in an archaic and elaborate style, typical of Lovecraft’s works, and makes references to elements of medieval history and culture. The tale also presents a dark and oppressive atmosphere, and a surprising and terrifying climax. The main characters of the tale “The Alchemist” by H. P. Lovecraft are: Antoine: The narrator and last descendant of a cursed noble family. Charles Le Sorcier: The sorcerer who cursed Antoine’s family and lives thanks to an elixir of eternal life. Michel Mauvais: Charles’s father, whose death by an ancestor of Antoine triggered the curse. First Paragraph: High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mound whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest, stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader. Last Paragraph: Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised his hideous head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I remained, paralyzed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my days and my nights. “Fool,” he shrieked, “can you not guess my secret? Have you no brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon your house? Have I not told you of the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of Alchemy was solved? I tell you; it is I! I! I! that have lived for six hundred years to maintain my revenge, FOR I AM CHARLES LE SORCIER!”

Antoine at 90 years old

Antoine at 30 years old

Antoine searching the castle

Charles Le Sorcier in flames

[darkeldritchdepths]

₂ Transcript:

THE MARBLE CAVE OF MISSOURI

A very large protion of the State of Missouri is honeycombed by caverns to such an extent that the underground drainage in many places deprives the surface of small streams. For many years, the existence of a large cave in the extreme southeastern portion of Stone County, Mo., has been known, but the inaccessibility of the locality has kept travelers, with but few exceptions, from attempting to visit it. Within the past year, however, such remarkable accounts of the wonders and extent of the cavern have appeared in the local and metropolitan newspapers that the Missouri World’s Fair Commission and the State Geological Survey determined to investigate the cave thoroughly and see what there was of truth in the stories which had been so widely circulated. Consequently, our party of three, representing both organizations, besides our photographer, Mr. C. E. DeGroff, of Warrensburg, Mo., left Aurora, a live mining city of Lawrence County, about 270 miles southwest of St. Louis, on the “Frisco” road, one charming day last fall, to explore the new wonder of the world. The 40 mile drive over cultivated prairies and through fine open but almost uninhabited forests might be dilated upon, but the limits of our space compel us to hasten on to the description of the object on our journey. Stone County lies for the most part on the southern slope of the so-called Ozark Mountains. Three mountains, however, are merely hills and ridges which have been formed by the erosion of the plateau which is known by geologists as the “Ozark Uplift” and would (continued on page 70.) [transcription continues after images]

(Continued from first page.) not to be called such by one familliar with the Alleghanies, the White Mountains, or even the Catskills. No railroad has yet touched the county, the forests of oak, with sycamore, elm, and walnut in the valleys, are for the most part in their primeval condition, and thousands of acres of fertile land may still be taken up under the U. S. homestead laws. The forests are free from underbrush and much grass grows under the trees, giving the scenery a park-like aspect.

Mr. Truman S. Powell’s claim occupies Echo Glade and the neighboring hills about a mile and a half from the mouth of the cave and about 300 feet below it, and is the best headquarters from which to visit the cavern. Mr. Powell is the editor of the Stone County Oracle, published at the county seat, Galena, 18 miles from his farm. He says that he has explored fifty caves in Stone County. He is a firm believer in the future of the county and is an ardent admirer of Marble Cave. His eldest son, William T. Powell, is the good-natured, efficient guide to the cave. He is strong and active and a keen observer whose judgement is very reliable.

Climbing this hill, which is known as Roark Mountain, we saw in its top a large sink hole about 200 feet long by 150 feet wide and 55 feet deep, the bottom of which had dropped out, leaving a yawning chasm opening into the chamber below. Descending a series of log steps in the side of the pit, we came to two short ladders which led through the opening to a platform, from which we descended a large, strong wooden adder into what seems to be a bottomless pit. This part of the journey is fraught with many imaginary dangers to those unaccustomed to ladders, but our party had received considerable training in entering mines in different parts of the State, and consequently we hastened down without fear, anxious to see what was in store for us. The bottom of the ladder rests upon the top of a mound of debris, about 45 or 50 feet below the platform above mentioned. Climbing down this cone of earth and slabs of limestone, we reached the bottom of the vast room which is called the “Grand Amphitheater.”

Some light comes through the great rift in the roof, which is the bottom of the sink hole, and as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the semi-darkness we could see something of the really grand dimensions of the immense dome in which we stood; but when the room was illuminated by red fire, its full g r a n d e u r was revealed. The dimensions as given in the newspaper accounts are greatly exaggerated, but the truth is sufficiently grand. The room is about 150 feet wide by 200 feet long, and the roof rises in a magnificent arch to a height of 165 feet from the floor. Some stalactites were seen on this broad expanse of roof, but the beauty of the scene lay chiefly in the symmetry of the arch and the variations produced by the differences in the limestone strata.

Two beautiful examples of drip formations occur in this great amphitheater. One is the “Great White Throne,” a magnificent stalagmitic mass of pure white onyx about 50 feet high, 50 feet in extreme width and 12 or 15 feet in thickness, showing all the beautiful forms which one might imagine to be caused by the freezing of a fountain. It is hollow and one can climb more than half way to the top inside.

A few yards from the Great White Throne rises the “Spring Room Sentinel,” a beautiful fluted column of combined stalactite and stalagmite about 20 feet high and 2 to 3 feet in diameter with swelled base which stands near to the opening leading from the Grand Amphitheater to the Spring Room and to the Animal Room. This passage is a long, straight, gradually converging one following a “joint” in the limestone, which lends to a large low room of unknown dimensions which contains the mummified remains of hundreds, even thousands of animals, mainly, if not entirely, of carnivorous species. Admittance to this room is positively forbidden by the owner of the cave, but the assistants to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington have had access to the material from it and are now at work upon their identifications. A specimen from this room which was shown to me consisted of the skull and jaw bones of a cat-like animal to which portions of dried skin and fur still clung. It had a very ancient appearance. The continuation beyond the Animal Room of the joint leading to it seems to emerge in the side of a ravine outside the cave. What was once apparently an opening here is now filled with earth and debris.

Mr. Will Powell thinks that this is the place where the much desired horizontal entrance to the cave can be made with comparatively little trouble and expense.

Opening out from the passageway to the Animal Room is the Spring Room and beyond this lies the “Shower Bath Room,” the latter being a perfect example of a conical dome some 30 feet high, down the roof of which the water trickles down and flows over a low precipice to the spring room. This water showed the remarkably low temperature of 48° F.

Behind the Great White Throne, in the Grand Amphitheater, is a passageway which leads to the waterfall and to the other portions of the cave, which will be described as we gon on. The first room to which this passage leads is called “The Registry Room” because the walls are covered in places with firm, damp, red clay, in which numerous visitors have inscribed their names with finger or staff - an unstable method of gaining celebrity. Here our guide called our attention to the fact that the atmosphere had become much warmer than it was in the first great chamber. There is, in fact, a difference of six or eight degrees. Then pointing to a great black hole in the floor of the room, he said “Listen!” and taking a huge rock cast it into the abyss. After some seconds we heard the sound of the rock as it fell into water below us. The abyss is called the “Gulf of Doom.” Actual measurement proved this precipice to be 88 feet in height!

Turning to the left and descending a slippery clay bank and a narrow ladder, we reached a point at which the cave divides, one arm going past a great slab of limestone standing on end, known as “The Lost River Sentinel,” in a direction S. 30° W. to “The Lost River Canyon,” a journey which we reserved for another day. Taking the other arm, leading in a directly opposite direction, and clambering through two passages like the “Corkscrew” in Mammoth Cave, we soon reached the top of the waterfall. The edge of this fall is about 20 feet across, and the water passes through a series of beautiful little pools with projecting rims of calcite crystals before it takes its final plunge 50 feet into the darkness. The top of this waterfall is about 285 feet below the top of the hill at the entrance of the cave.

Retracing our steps for some distance from the top of the waterfall and turning on our track again at a lower level, we reached the bottom of the pit (8) into which we had cast the stone from the Registry Room above, and then passed on down a narrow defile by the aid of ladders and over slippery clay banks until we stood at the foot of the beautiful waterfall. Half way down the precipice a projection has caught the spray from the water, and the deposits of ages have formed there a beautiful bowl of carbonate of lime. Pointing to a 25 foot slope of miry clay and water, which lay just beyond us, Mr. Powell Said: “That’s the way to ‘Blonde’s Throne,’ the prettiest thing in the cave.” We looked at the prospect in dismay, and anxiously inquired whether there were no other way to get there; being answered in the negative, we left him behind, as he said there was no need of a guide, and plowed our way through the miry mass, which came to our knees. After toiling up this slope and through a narrow cleft in the rock, we reached the beginning of what they called “The Dry Crawl.” We wondered what the wet one was going to be. Down we went on our hands and knees and began the toilsome journey. One hundred and fifty feet of this, most of which was too low even for this method of locomotion, brought us to the “Midway Rest,” a small room, out of which a passage leads upward to several small chambers, in which were phantastically carved shapes in the limestone. We suggest the name of “The Temple” for one of the chambers, which contains fine Doric capitals. But Blonde’s Throne did not lie in that direction. As soon as we had gotten our breath and adjusted our surveying instruments we started on the “Wet Crawl,” and wet it surely was! We were pretty careful about the first pool, and tried to keep out of the water as much as possible, but when we reached the second pool we saw there was nothing to do but plunge in and work our way across. After thirty or forty yards of this kind of travel on hands and knees in the water, or worming our way through comparatively dry holes in the rocks, we reached a room a the base of the ascent to our destination. Further progress on the level on which we had come was stopped by a pool of water of unknown extent, known as “Mystic River,” spanned a the beginning by a low symmetrical arch of limestone.

A short, steep ascent led us to a great narrow cleft in the rocks about 100 feet high. Following this a short distance, we came to a steep incline of wet, slippery limestone, up which we climbed 25 or 30 feet, then pushing our way through a hole in the wall, barely large enough for our bodies, we were in Blonde’s Throne. This is a small room, only about 15 feet in diameter, but it is a gem. It is almost completely filled with beautiful and curious stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the stalactites were in sheet-like folds, and a sufficient number of them gave forth musical sounds when struck to enable a skillful musician to play simple tunes. The stalactites here are in all stages of growth, from narrow, hollow tubes, like pipestems, to solid pillars several inches in thickness. A small opening in the side of the room revealed the existence of a room which has never been explored. Rockets fired into it show that it must be a room of large dimensions.

Returning from Blonde’s Throne, and slipping and sliding down by the aid of the slimy rope which had helped us up the steep ascent, we reached the bottom of the incline all to soon for some of our party, Lighting up the cleft by magnesium ribbon, we could see weird drip formations filling the crevices and projecting from the walls far above our heads. The return journey to the bottom of the waterfall was made much more expeditiously than the advance, because, being thoroughly wet, muddy, and cold, we did not stop for scenery or surveyor’s measurements.

Another day was spent in exploring the windings of the “Lost River Canyon,” which, as stated above, lies out to the southwest from the Registry Room. Climbing over huge blocks of limestone which had fallen from the roof, or threading our way between slabs standing on edge, we soon came to the beginning of a much longer but drier crawl than the one just described. After worming our way along for some 200 yards, we came to a beautiful stream of water flowing swiftly through the underground channel which it had carved for itself in the l i m e s t o n e. This was the “Lost River.” In several places tortuous passages led out from this canyon, which are barren of interest, and serve merely to confuse the traveler and add to the length of the cavern. Somewhat less than a quarter of a mile from the Registry Room we ascended a steep slope and arived at “Springsted’s Throne.” This is a room about as large as Blonde’s Throne, but with a smaller amount of drip formation in it. The special feature of this room is a small recess, which is separated from the main portion by a lattice of stalactites. The cave has been explored for about a fourth of a mile beyond this room, but nothing of interest has been discovered in that direction.

The explorations thus far described have been along galleries opening out from only two places in the grand entrance dome. On the north side of the Grand Amphitheater another series of chambers opens out, most of which are comparatively small and devoid of drip formations. The first of these is the Mother Hubbard Room, in which an isolated waterworn pillar of limestone stands which has received the name “She” from its suggestion of Rider Haggard’s weird descriptions. A dry crawl of 70 feet from this room takes one to the “Battery,” a dome which is 60 feet in greatest diameter and 50 or 60 feet high. Here the bats congregate in vast numbers, whence its name. From one side of the battery a series of rooms, one of which is known as the Dungeon, and low dangerous passages extend to the Grand Amphitheater again. A low narrow passage leads from the Mother Hubbard Room to the northwest to a series of barren rooms two of which are said to rival the Grand Amphitheater in size. This part of the cave is dry. The second room reached contains considerable amounts of epsomite, MgSO₄+7H₂O, and therefore is called the Epsom Salts Room. The passage to these rooms is called the Windy Passage on account of the strong current of air which sweeps through it.

As there were no means at hand of exploring this passage and the dangerous route beyond, we did not undertake to visit it.

In addition to bats the living animals to be found in the cave consist of crickets, newts, and eyeless fish. Plant life is represented by a peculiar white fungus which grows on the rocks in the Grand Amphitheater. Vast numbers of bats make their home in the cave, especially during the winter season, and the floor is covered to a depth of many inches with bat guano. Mr. [Page 71 begins] Powell has distinguished five kinds of bats here, none of which, however, are of unusual size or appearance.

That the cave was known to the early settlers and explorers of this region is shown by the notched poles which were found in the cave when it was first rediscovered, and which evidently served as ladders for entrance into the cave. Two of these are now to be seen in the Mother Hubbard Room. Local supposition is that these notched trees were used by the Spaniards, as it is known that they occupied the land in this region before the English settlers took possession of it.

The cave as thus described is of considerable extent and possesses variety in scenery and interest. It is well worth a visit, and when the projected railroads from Aurora and Springfield pass near it, it will undoubtedly become a summer resort; but the estimation of the distances, heights and depths which have appeared in certain usually responsible papers and magazines are very wide of the truth. Its unexaggerated beauties are enough to recommend it to the popular fervor. The accompanying map represents, as accurately as the circumstances would permit, almost all of the cave that has been explored. It is certain, however, that the cave is by no means fully explored and that further investigation will add largely to this map. At present even Blonde’s Throne and Springsted’s Throne are practically inaccessible to the average visitor, but a not excessive amount of work would materially lessen the most serious difficulties in the routes.

My special thanks are due Mr. J. D. Robertson, assistant on the Missouri State Geological Survey, and Mr. H. D. Card, draughtsman for the Missouri World’s Fair Commission, for their painstaking assistance in making the accompanying map and measurements and the thermometric determinations that are given herewith. To Mr. Powell and his family is due the credit for almost all the exploration that the cave has received.

An exceptionally low temperature, 48 F°., was observed at the lowest point of the Grand Amphitheater and in the air and water of the Spring Room. Throughout the rest of the cavern the temperature seemed to be about that usually found in caves, 54° F.

In considering the scientific value of this cave, the fact should not be overlooked that this is the first cavern reported in this country containing mummified animal remains in large quantities.

[manwalksintobar]

A Glass of Cider  // Diane Di Prima

I DO NOT LOVE YOU LESS BECAUSE my love poems dont rhyme I wd like them to be utterly incoherent so you wd know:

yr landscapes are redolent w/ death whose elbow is the keystone arch of that hill all you ever paint is primeval burial mounds I mean it, who the hell do you think you are

[antiquitiesandlabyrinths]

Duat

Let’s dive into Duat.

Starting simple, Duat is the underworld of ancient Egypt. Not a hell, not Tartarus, and not Orcus. Although these are all a type of afterlife, Duat doesn’t follow the typical order of ‘good place, bad place’ like the religions of today do, and that sets Duat out as a place of great interest.

The land of Duat was on the ‘other side’ of the flat earth, allowing Ra as the sun travel from west to east so the sun could rise again each day. His journey, although in the realm of Osiris, was a perilous one. Apep - a giant serpent, representative of chaos. Ra fought Apep every night, letting peace and order rule over chaos to allow the sun to rise again.

Another remarkable creature, or rather collection of creatures, is the group referred to as ‘The Cavern Deities’. They existed inside the twelve caves Egyptians believed to exist and believed they had to go through on their journey to paradise. 

There was a nine-headed jackal that fed on rotted flesh, and a number of snake deities guarding the ‘Silent Region’. Those two gods were thought to have been in the first cavern. 

In the next cavern, the second, lay Sesy, a spitfire snake, and catfish-headed gods named Nariu.

 In the third cavern were Nehebkau and nine catfish-headed Gods led by Osiris. The next held something by the name of ‘Great One Who Is On His Belly’, and in the fifth was Nut, the Goddess of the Sky, and ithyphallic Osiris. 

In the sixth was Tatenen, and while we don’t yet know what’s supposedly in the seventh cavern, the eighth had ‘Those Who Raise Their Superiors To The Sky’, and the ninth had Gods of the Primeval Abyss. 

In the tenth was ‘Groaning goddesses with blood-dripping axes’, and the eleventh was Ammit, devourer of hearts.

Clearly there are sections of the Duat we don’t know, as the names of some caverns are awfully vague. However Richard H. Wilkinson, an Egyptologist, compiled a list of what could exist in the tenth cavern. I’ll discuss this in a later post.

When the deceased enters the Duat, they find themself in a long valley with mountains on either side of them. Behind the right mountains lay Osiris’ mansion, and behind the left mountains were the trials and tribulations the deceased had to go through. After that they would find themselves in the mansion, where the weighing of the heart ceremony would occur.

While this world was much like earth, including features such as rivers and mountains, as well as lakes, islands, caverns, mounds, and fields, there were also unearthly features. In the Book of the Dead the Duat is described with all those features and lakes of fire, walls of iron, and turquoise trees.

The Book of the Dead is a part of the Coffin Texts, a variety of texts found in tombs made to help the deceased through the afterlife. They included spells, and though the Coffin Texts are everywhere in a tomb, no two are the same. Some include spells that others don’t, and some forgo common spells. It seems apparent that the Coffin Texts were unique to each person, and most likely privately orchestrated and made. Its’ title Book of the Dead only came about through western scholars – the actual translation of the name is the Book of Coming Forth by Day, or Spells for Going Forth by Day.

This land acted chiefly as a world for the Gods, not a torture realm for humans. That means many Gods lived here alongside even the ‘terrible’ creatures. Alongside the Gods lived humans who passed on to the Field of Reeds. However, the Gods are more remarkable and recognizable compared to several million people, so I’ll list the Gods instead. The list includes Osiris (of course), Ma’at, Thoth, Horus, Hathor, and Anubis. As for the minor Gods, I’ll have another post titled Minor Deities of Duat, which will go into deeper detail than I can here.

Another description of the rooms of Duat exists, listing more geographical locations and the actual threat rather than the group of Gods residing there.

In the first room lay the squatting Gods, snake chambers, and the paths of Rostau.

In the second are the high paths of Rostau in confusion, and in the third are watchers, followed by a Lake of Fire in the fourth.

The fifth room is the abode of knife-weilders, and in the sixth are the keepers of the gates, also referred to as guardians.

In the seventh cavern are those who shout; announcers. In the eighth are the gates of fire and the darkness, resting before the circle of fire in the ninth cavern.

In the tenth is the Mansion of Osiris, marking the end of the perilous journey.

[faeryqueenwitch]

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ🌳Fairy Trees🌳Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Many fairies are linked to just one tree or plant, or to a group of trees. Trees are extremely special - a fact recognized by the Native Americans, who call them “The Standing People”. Often you will come upon a tree and be very aware of its spirit, which is usually warm, wise, and welcoming; it can be very healing to be close to such trees. Occasionally, however, a tree may be not to well disposed towards humans (as the hobbits found in “The Lord of The Rings with Old Man Willow), and then it is best to keep your distance.

🌳 In times gone by,the earth was covered in forest, and when we go deep into the woodland, we really are in the presence of beings that are unutterably ancient, for all the accumulated wisdom of the ages is embodied in each tree. The primeval forest is also a metaphor for our unconscious, our deepest and most primitive impulses and yearnings. Tree fairies can teach us a great deal about ourselves, if we have the courage to listen. When we are alone in nature we are able to hear our own thoughts and feelings more clearly, and it is easier to be trustful with ourselves.

🌳 Long ago, many trees were considered to be the home of oracles, with deity whispering through the leaves.

🌳 The Fairy Triad 🌳

Oak,ash,and thorn are termed the Fairy Triad,and where three grow, fairies can easily be seen. Many fairies are reputed to live in the majestic oak,and to feel one is to risk the wrath of the Old Gods- namely,fairies. Druid worship took place in groves,and the oak grove was especially sacred. Ash may be used to protect against fairies,when carried as a staff or wand, but also offers a potential gateway between the worlds,as it was the tree upon which the Norse god Odin hung, to gain the secret of the runes. The twisted shape of hawthorn is magical indeed,especially when growing near a  barrow mound or in groups of three. It is courting disaster to damage such a tree, and even dozing beneath one may be to risk fairy displeasure.Like much of nature, trees have been abused. Always proceed with respect  for trees in order to retain the goodwill of the Fairy Folk.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

To the Light of Day || Solo

TIMING: Early morning, after the destruction of Constance

SUMMARY: Morgan tries to lay her pain to rest.

CONTAINS: brief mentions of parental abuse

The snow was coming down hard enough to bury White Crest as Morgan walked home from the outskirts. The sirens had quieted and the Christmas lights all switched out. The only sign it was morning came from the ring of church bells as a midnight service let out and oblivious churchgoers turtled out to the parking lot in their puffy coats. From where she stood, Morgan could see the flicker of Advent candles, the Christian bastardization of her Yule log. Morgan watched a pimply twelve year old snuff them out one by one until the last of the faithful left and the door shut for the night. She walked behind the straggling flock, head bowed against the snow as it fell harder. She wanted to imagine what being a part of them would be like, just one of the humans, lighting a candle against her fear and praying en masse to a big nice dad in the sky who would whisper while you slept that everything was okay and for your own good, just you wait and see. But Morgan had never known anything close, and she didn’t deserve much of an escape right now, did she?

When she was little, Morgan spent Yule with her parents gathered around a row of three tapers nested into a log holder, one for each of them to burn all night and day. Her mother lit the candles because Morgan ‘didn’t do it right’. Her dad picked out the prayers from the family grimoires or wrote something more personalized to the family on his own. And Morgan agonized over whether she should wish for snow or a new friend or a pony. They were together and apart keeping this sweet, wonderful secret winter holiday from all the boisterous Christmasers. The room never erupted with the sound of their poetry recitations, the songs her parents picked to honor the day changed from year to year, so she never grew a familiar, cuddly attachment to any tunes except for the verses of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ they stole for themselves. When Yule became just Morgan and Ruth, the candlelight seemed dimmer, their voices barely rose at all, and her dad’s old prayers rang hollow without his intentions to power them. The darkness of the longest night grew heavy in a primeval way that reminded Morgan that the first Yuletides were made to make sure the sun wouldn’t abandon humanity for good. It was the kind of dark that you could drown in, the kind that broke your shoulders to strain against. Morgan felt that old, cruel weight of the night wrapping around her now as she walked. She didn’t have a yule candle log for herself this year. After dying and the various breakdowns that followed, merrymaking and yuletide seemed like more of a pipe dream. And peace, after what she’d done? Morgan scoffed bitterly at the thought.

“It’s not about the candles, pumpkin,” Ruth’s voice said. On their first solstice without her dad, Ruth had fumbled their last match, and it was too icy to run to the 24-hour pharmacy for more. Morgan fretted so hard conjuring up a fire to replace it, she’d scorched the candles and ruined their old log. Ruth grabbed her hands before she could do anything else. “It’s still Yuletide. The sun is still coming back.”

“But it’s not the same! What’s the point of the ritual if we can’t even get one stupid candle going to pretend like this is going to get better!”

Morgan couldn’t remember what her mother had said to that. She only knew that afterwards she’d left the room and cried, missing her dad and the kind of life where you didn’t hold your breath for the next crisis and just did things. At sunrise she went out to the window to watch the return of the light and found her mother in the backyard, praying in a stone circle she’d cast the mundane way, reciting the charge of the Goddess...

Morgan trudged through downtown until she came across Al’s. Half the rainbow lights strung around the awning were burnt out, and the inside was dead except for the lonely old man Morgan always saw in the corner. The old TV in the upper corner was switched to one of those fireplace broadcasts, where the flames never dimmed and the lights shined on glass baubles just right. Morgan couldn’t help but stop and watch. It wasn’t the best picture quality; what billows and whispers she imagined coming from the flames were more from her memories of better, brighter fires. But it was the first fire Morgan had seen all season, and it brought tears to her eyes.

Could you wish on a yule log if it was fake? Was it an affront to the ancestors or the spirits if you paid homage through pixels? Morgan laughed hopelessly. The spirits she knew had been pretty clear about what they wanted her to do, and after tonight, wishing on a crappy TV probably ranked really low on the list. What would she wish for anyway? A fucking do-over? Morgan pressed her fingers to the frosted glass, staring as hard into the screen as possible. “I’d do it all different if I could,” she whispered. “If anyone could just tell me how to make it stop hurting without passing it off to other people or--fuck, killing random nobodies who never did anything. If I could just know how we’re supposed to…” Morgan quieted and shut her eyes, realizing that for all intents and purposes, she was talking to herself. She had lied, threatened, stolen, maimed, and killed for her pain. And here she still was, carrying it like a growth in her chest she couldn’t excise. What do I do? If someone could just tell me what to do, tell me how this stops. I don’t care what else I have to do as long as we can all stop hurting...

But the universe didn’t speak to you in words, it didn’t speak at all. It just worked. It moved. Energy cycled through you and around you and sometimes if you were lucky and alive, you could move it back. But it’s not about the light, pumpkin, Ruth said again. Morgan reached for her in her mind, to that soggy, miserable Yule and the purple sunrise that came after, and the words her mother had said to the reborn sun.

To thou who thinkest to seek Me, know that thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou knowest the Mystery: if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without.

“Fuck,” Morgan whispered. Could it be that simple? Was that something she was allowed after death? She opened her eyes. The TV had been switched to some Christmas cartoon, but that didn’t matter. Morgan resumed her walk, swift and purposeful in a way it hadn’t been before. She didn’t stop until she made it to the cemetery on the East End, where the weeds were always a little too tall and the stones a little grubby with moss. Morgan played the words in her head on herself, burning with longing.

She was dead, her nerves were smothered in death, she couldn’t grow or age or shift along the wheel of life the way the living did, but she grew a new hand for every one she lost. Her body frayed and sagged closer to the earth it could never rest in when she got hungry, but maybe that wasn’t a mark of betrayal. Maybe it was a reminder from the earth, a hand on her hand, a bridge between the flow of the world and the place where she dwelled in between. Maybe it was a rope to keep her connected. Maybe the dead could still pray. She had come back this far, hadn’t she? She’d done it wrong and twisted and broken all over again, but she could walk and burst through the rickety gate and carry herself to the highest mound in the place and brush back the snow gathering over the graves. She had enough sense to be sorry and scared. She had enough of her self to wonder.

Morgan cleared the snow away until there was a body sized patch of brown grass to lay in. She fell face forward and dug her hands in deep. Please… If I am still a part of you, please…

The ground was hard with death, but the deeper Morgan dug her hands in, the softer it grew. Layer by layer, into that place where life only slept, like the day during the long night. Was that her? A night, a season, moving slowly until her sense of light came again?

If that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without.

Let me, Morgan whispered in her heart, the words no longer a question. I need you to let me. And I need you to take this. She crawled up to her knees and dug her nails into the fabric of her sweater. She worried at the threads, thinking of the memories that had twisted around her heart every time she’d had a chance to let Constance leave this plane for good and said no. Yelling at the paramedics while her dad was wheeled away, her mother’s nails cutting moons into her neck and shoulder as she dragged her down the hall, the pole in her stomach and how her head flashed with pain every time she tried to move, the coffins lowered into the ground, the phone calls unanswered, the weeks lost to laying in bed because there was no point in getting up when it was all going to get ripped away again, the loneliness, the sting of every lost friend and broken hope… Morgan pulled on herself, shuddering as she let the hurt cut her on the way out, as sharp as if they’d been made fresh. In her mind, she made them into one braided cord, plain and riddled with knots and kinks in the fibres. She pulled, letting the other awful little things stick and tangle into it. When she could think of nothing else she pulled again, feeling the claws at the end of the hurt clinging to her.

Let me give this to you for safe-keeping, she silently asked the earth. Take this in lieu of my body. Let it decay in its own good time and nourish something else. Because it’s going to take me away from you and myself and everything I love. I trust you not to use this for any ill. You have held me up this far, and you will hold me further still, my dear, old Earth. Even Morgan’s wildest imagination and most desperate devotion couldn’t unhook every cord binding her to her hurt, but some of them gave, root and all, and fell into the ground. She piled the dirt she’d loosed over the spot her mind’s eye conjured the fallen cords. There was nothing to forgive, because the earth didn’t weigh value like that, only poison and barbs that needed to be worked out. Only healing for the holes the cords had left in her, rest for the girls she’d been and was no longer, and courage for the woman she wanted to be from now on. Someone who touched others with understanding before spite, who guarded the world against her hurt, who stood up for as many people as possible and not just her friends, who was kind and soft and forgave as much as her soul could bear it. Someone who could mourn and atone for the hurt she spread instead of brushing it off. Someone her past selves could be proud of and mystified by. As day follows night and spring follows winter, keep me steady until I find my own light.

“So may it be,” she said, promising herself even more than the ground at her feet. By the time Morgan finished, the dark had washed away to a pale gray. Through the veil of snow clouds, Morgan was sure she saw a white silhouette of the newly turned sun.

[mina-el-mersainly]

The Pyramid of Neferefre, also known as the Pyramid of Raneferef, (in ancient Egyptian Netjeri-bau-Nefer-ef-Ra (Divine is Neferefre's power)) is a 25th century BC unfinished pyramid complex built for the Egyptian pharaoh Neferefre of the Fifth Dynasty. The pyramid was hastily converted into a square mastaba or primeval mound after Neferefre's early death.

#egypt_where_it_all_begins #egyptology #egypt #history #pharaoh #wonderful_places #wanderlust #documentary #culture #daily #DYK #didyouknow #knowledge #stories #facts #travel #travelgram #tourist #solotravel #instagram #instagood #instalike #instadaily #likes #followme #today #sunday #mystery

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[forbidden-sorcery]

As the millennium draws to it’s close there is a widespread and pervasive awareness of the ending of an age and the dawn of a new aeon within the human psyche. We can palpably sense the demise of the exhausted and outworn Judaeo-Christian world in a veritable ‘twilight of the gods’ as the twin demons of reactionary politics and fundamentalist religiosity stalk contemporary society, seeking to terrorise and enslave the free souls of humankind and mould them after their own distorted images.                 Yet, as the sterile old order perishes amidst the surfeit of toxins it has generated over the last thousand years we are witnessing a visible manifestation of anakukosis, the eternal return - whilst we stand at the breakthrough threshold of a new cycle of time and consciousness we are paradoxically drawing closer to increasingly ancient mysteries encoded deep within the neural cortex, we are beginning to glimpse the faery visions of gods and ancestors in the primordial age and to re-activate the deeply-buried archetypal patterns which link us with that ‘great time’ or golden age.                 In the foretime, middle-earth and the otherworlds were closer and the channels of interconnection between the realms were more vital and energetic - the sky was closer to the land, men could fly and speak with animals and birds and the ancestors and divine beings communicated easily and mingled upon the Many-Coloured Land. The traditional shaman, witch or wizard seeks to re-actualise these mythic conditions in his or her own being, to act within the sacred time and space of the paradaisal foretime and to re-manifest the magical powers of the primeval divine ancestors. This work of bridging the realms of middle-earth and Elfhame is still at the core of contemporary Wicce-craeft. today. This is the initiatic mystery in which our human and our faery natures or ‘souls’ are re-unified into a balanced whole in an inner hierogamy or ‘mystic marriage’ which takes place within the hollow mounds of the Sidhe, in the deepest caverns of Annwvyn.

Nigel Jackson - The Call of the Horned Piper

[onceuponatimetheworldwasround]

The sun rises over the circular mound of creation as goddesses pour out the primeval waters around it. Artwork made in Twenty-first Dynasty (c. 1075–945 BC). Original artist unknown

[kispu]

On Mesopotamian demons

“The utukku-demons stem from the early, embryonic cosmos. Their ancestor are variously named, but most often they are spawn (rihûtu) of Heaven and Earth, who on principle can have formed a productive pair only before their separation by Enlil; elsewhere the demons are related to Enki and Ninki, to other primeval pairs, to the Dukug 'Holy Mound', Enlil's birthplace, or to the Apsû, at the ends of the earth, a primeval locality. Once they are called 'children of the allû's', the primeval 'working gods', whose rebellion led to the creation of mankind. They 'have no god', no living divine parent to whom they were responsible, and who was responsible for them. A demon is not a god, but 'although not a god, his voice is loud, and his sheen (melammû) is lofty'. The godlike sheen notwithstanding, however, the demon's 'shadow is very dark, there is no light in his body'.

Like the primeval Monsters the demons did not have cults, but unlike the latter, who found employ in the service of the gods, they became cosmic outcasts, unintegrated vagabonds feeding ‘without mercy’ (la padû) on a civilization they could not be part of. The demons, not understanding, ‘keep wandering around from temple to temple, but since no flour has been scattered for them, nor any divine offering has been made for them, their behavior has become aggressive’. Because they do not keep court in temples like gods, they are unable to ‘heed prayer or supplication’. In the exorcistic rituals they are advised to satisfy themselves with the food and drink offered to ghosts, and then leave.

As to appearance the utukku-demons were beyond monstrosity. The text explains that they were neither male nor female, had no wives or children; that they were incorporeal non-beings, without mouth, limbs, face, hearing, or vision; that they were concealed, could not be seen even by daylight; that their names did not exist in Heaven and Earth, and that they were not counted in the universal census.

The demons, then, partook in the not-yet being of the not-yet, embryonic cosmos, and as incorporeal, featureless, placeless, and in general negatively defined carriers of pure otherness they were not, and could not be represented in any form.”

- Frans Wiggermann. The Mesopotamian Pandemonium.

[digiwitchvivi]

Egyptian God's and Godesses

❤Amun - A creator God, patron of the city of Thebes.

❤Maahes - Egyptian lion-headed God of war.

❤Anhur - An Egyptian sky god and God of war. His name meant “sky-bearer”.

❤Ra – God of the sun, earth, and underworld. He is powerful and protective.

❤Anubis – God of dead, embalming, funerals, and mourning ceremonies. Jackal-headed God.

❤Thoth – God of the moon, magic, and writing. 

❤Apophis - God of snakes, war, and Chaos.

❤Bes - Dwarf God.

❤Geb - God of the earth.

❤Khnum - Ram-headed God.

❤Khonsu - God of the moon.

❤Mafdet - God of justice.

❤Osiris - God of the underworld and the afterlife.

❤Ptah - God of creation.

❤Qebui - God of the North wind.

❤Qetesh - A mother Goddess of fertility.

❤Set - God of chaos, change, deserts, storms, and foreigners.

❤Shu - God of wind and air.

❤Sopdu - A God of war.

❤Tefnut - Lion Goddess of water and fertility.

❤Wadjet - Goddess of protection.

❤Sekhmet - Goddess of lions, fire, and vengeance.

❤Pakhet - A goddess of motherhood and of war.

❤Ma'at - Goddess of justice, truth, and of order.

❤Kebechet - Goddess of purification.

❤Isis - Goddess of magic, marriage, healing, and protection.

❤Hathor - Goddess of love.

❤Bastet - Cat Goddess.

❤Amunet - Wife of Amun, one of the creation Goddesses.

❤Tawaret – Goddess of childbirth who protects women in labour. People wear her image as an amulet to protect them and their children.

❤Kuk - God of personification of darkness.

❤Horus - The falcon-headed sky God.

❤Khepri - God of scarab beetles.

❤Aten - Aten God is the disk of the sun.

❤Ammit - Goddess Ammit was the personification of divine retribution. The Goddess with a body that was part lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile.

❤Atum - “The All” or “Perfection”. His appearance is a man with the double crown. Atum was a creator God. 

❤Nun - The sun God.

❤Montu - Montu was a falcon God of war.

❤Babi - Babi was a fierce, bloodthirsty baboon God.

❤Heh - God of personification of infinity or eternity.

❤Wepwawet - An ancient wolf God.

❤Serapis - Sun, healing, and fertility God.

❤Wadj-wer - God of fertility whose name means the “Great Green”. 

❤Khenti-Amentiu - Warrior God.

❤Resheph - Resheph was a God of War and Tunder.

❤Heka - Heka was the God of deification of magic.

❤Andjety - Underworld God of Rebirth. 

❤Heryshaf - Heryshaf was an ancient creator, fertility God, and God of the riverbanks.

❤Hu - Hu was the God of taste and the personification of the divine command.

❤Shezmu - Shezmu is the Egyptian God of blood, wine, perfume, and the slaughterer servant of Osiris. 

❤Aker - Aker was an ancient Egyptian God of earth and death. 

❤Sia - Goddess of wisdom.

❤Banebdjedet - Banebdjedet is a ram God of fertility with a cult centre at Mendes. 

❤Mehen - Mehen is a protective God who is depicted as a snake which coils around the sun God Ra during his journey through the night.

❤Hermes Trismegistus - Combination of Greek God Hermes and Egyptian God Thoth Gods of writing, magic, and more.

❤Ba-Pef - Ba-Pef was a minor underworld God in Egyptian mythology.

❤Duamutef - In Egyptian mythology, Dumutef was one of the Four sons of Horus and a funerary God who protected the stomach and small intestines of mummified corpses, kept in a canopic jar.

❤Mandulis - Mandulis is a Nubian God depicted anthropomorphically wearing the hemhem crown, consisting of three atef crowns, or ‘bundles’ mounted on ram’s horns with a uraeus (cobra) on either side, each surmounted by a solar disk, or as a human-headed bird.

❤Iah - Iah is a lunar God in ancient Egyptian religion. His name simply means “Moon”.

❤Am-heh - In Egyptian mythology, Am-heh was a minor God from the underworld, whose name means either “devourer of millions” or “eater of eternity”.

❤Nephthys - Nephthys is the Egyptian Goddess of mourning and lamentation, sleep, rivers, the night, service, and the home, a friend and protector of the dead.

❤Neith - Neith was an ancient Goddess of war and weaving. 

❤Serket - Serket is the Goddess of fertility, nature, animals, medicine, magic, and healing venomous stings and bites.

❤Seshat - Seshat was the ancient Egyptian Goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. 

❤Heqet - Heqet is an Egyptian Goddess of fertility, identified with Hathor, represented in the form of a frog. 

❤Nekhbet - Nekhbet was the Egyptian white vulture Goddess and protector of Egypt and the Pharaohs. She was referred to as “Mother of Mothers, who hath existed from the Beginning”.

❤Mut -  In Egyptian religion, a sky Goddess and great divine mother. Mut was the mother Goddess , the queen of the Gods at Waset, arising in power with the God Amen.

❤Meretseger - Meretseger is a Goddess with head of the snake.

❤Hededet - Hededet is a scorpion Goddess of the ancient Egyptian religion.

❤Anuket - Anuket was the personification and Goddess of the Nile river in the Egyptian mythology.

❤Meskhenet - In ancient Egyptian mythology, Meskhenet was the Goddess of childbirth, and the creator of each child's Ka, a part of their soul, which she breathed into them at the moment of birth. She was worshipped from the earliest of times by Egyptians.

❤Eye of Ra - The Eye of Ra is a being in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as a feminine counterpart to the sun god Ra and a violent force that subdues his enemies. The Eye is an extension of Ra’s power, equated with the disk of the sun, but it also behaves as an independent entity.

❤Renenutet -Renenutet was a Goddess of nourishment and the harvest in ancient Egyptian religion.

❤Amunet - Amunet was a primordial Goddess in ancient Egyptian religion.

❤Menhit -  Menhit was originally a Nubian war Goddess in Egyptian mythology.

❤Hatmehit - Hatmehit in the ancient Egyptian religion was a fish-Goddess. In ancient Egyptian art Hatmehit was depicted either as a fish, or a woman with a fish emblem or crown on her head. She was a Goddess of life and protection.

❤Sopdet - Sopdet is the ancient Egyptian name of the star Sirius and its personification as an Egyptian Goddess. 

❤Anput - Anput is a Goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. She was the Goddess of funerals and mummification, the mother of Kebechet and possibly from Ammit also.

❤Hemsut - In Egyptian mythology, Hemsut was the Goddess of fate, destiny, and protection in ancient Egypt. 

❤Raet-Tawy -  Raet-Tawy is an ancient Egyptian solar Goddess, the female aspect of Ra. Her name is simply the female form of Ra’s name; the longer name Raet-Tawy means “Raet of the Two Lands” (Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt).

❤Wosret - Wosret meaning "the powerful" was an Egyptian Goddess with a cult centre at Thebes in Upper Egypt. She was initially a localised guardian deity.

❤Mehet-Weret - Mehet-Weret is a Goddess of the sky in ancient Egyptian religion. Her name means “Great Flood”.

❤Tenenet - Tenenet was an ancient Egyptian Goddess of childbirth and beer. 

❤Werethekau - Werethekau "great one of magic, great enchantress" was an ancient Egyptian deity. She served as the personification of supernatural powers.

❤Anat - Anat is a major northwest Semitic Goddess.

❤Min - Min was the God of reproduction.

❤Qebehsenuef - Qebehsenuef "he who refreshes his brothers" is an ancient Egyptian deity. He is one of the four sons of Horus in Egyptian mythology, the God of protection and of the West.

❤Heh - Ḥeḥ was in Egyptian mythology, the personification of infinity or eternity in the Ogdoad, his name itself meaning “endlessness”.

❤Petbe - In Egyptian mythology, Petbe was the god of revenge. His name translates as Sky-Ba, roughly meaning Soul of the Sky, or Mood of the sky. 

❤Tutu - God of protection of tombs, later guarded the sleeping from danger or bad dreams. Master of demons. Tutu’s iconography is anthropomorphic, consisting of the body of a striding, winged lion, the head of a human, other heads of hawks, and crocodiles projecting from the body, and the tail of a serpent.

❤Apedemak - Apedemak was a lion-headed warrior God.

❤Weneg - Weneg was a sky and death God from ancient Egyptian religion, who was said to protect the earth and his inhabitants against the arrival of the “great chaos”.

❤Hemen - Hemen is the falcon-God, who holds a cobra between its claws.

❤Tatenen - Tatenen was the God of the primordial mound in ancient Egyptian religion. His name means risen land or exalted earth, as well as referring to the silt of the Nile. As a primeval chthonic deity, Tatenen was identified with creation. He was an androgynous protector of nature from the Memphis area.

❤Bata - Bata from Saka is an Egyptian bull-God of the New Kingdom, who represents together with his brother Anubis.

❤Apis - A live bull worshipped as a God at Memphis.

❤Aten - The God disk of the sun.

❤Gengen-Wer - Goose God.

❤Hapi - God of the Nile.

❤Heket - Goddess of frogs.

❤Nut - In Egyptian mythology, Nut was the Goddess of the sky.

❤Seker - Falcon God.

❤Selket - Goddess of scorpions.

❤Sobek - God of crocodiles and alligators.

(Sidenote: I work with bastet and hathor ^-^)