THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF HERMES

 by Mark David on elementamundi.com

Another seven... seven is such a magical number.

“The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open.”

–The Kybalion.

These are the Seven Principles of Hermes:
 
1) Mentalism — “Everything is mental; the Universe is a mental creation of the All.”

2) Correspondence — “As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within.”

3) Vibration — “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

4) Polarity — “Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half truths.”

5) Rhythm — “Everything flows out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

6) Cause and Effect — “Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to the law; chance is but the name for a law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.”

7) Gender : “Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.”

The Kore Kosmou

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In Heaven the gods dwell with the Architect of all, in the Aether are the stars and the sun, in the Air are souls and the moon, and on Earth are men and living things...

A Greek text called the Kore Kosmou (“The Virgin of the Cosmos") ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus (the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Thoth), names the four elements fire, water, air, and earth.

One of the most famous of all alchemical axioms is ‘as above, so below’ – meaning always that in every small part of reality there is a tiny reflection of the great ‘over-structure’ of reality. And, in the largest structures, are hidden secrets of the smallest. And vice versa.

This is represented pictorially by the 16th-17th century Rosicrucian and Kabbalist, Robert Fludd, in his Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617) and by Fludd’s contemporary, the alchemist, Johann Daniel Mylius, in the Opus Medico-Chymicum (1618). 

The Kore Kosmou

' And Isis answer made: Of living things, my son, some are made friends with fire, and some with water, some with air, and some with earth, and some with two or three of these, and some with all. And, on the contrary, again some are made enemies of fire, and some of water, some of earth, and some of air, and some of two of them, and some of three, and some of all. For instance, son, the locust and all flies flee fire; the eagle and the hawk and all high-flying birds flee water; fish, air and earth; the snake avoids the open air. Whereas snakes and all creeping things love earth; all swimming things love water; winged things, air, of which they are the citizens; while those that fly still higher love the fire and have the habitat near it. Not that some of the animals as well do not love fire; for instance salamanders, for they even have their homes in it. It is because one or another of the elements doth form their bodies' outer envelope. Each soul, accordingly, while it is in its body is weighted and constricted by these four.'

The most essential notions that we see here are creation by the word, the gods acting under the command of a supreme God, the function of created souls to keep nature circulating, the body a prison of the soul, the heavenly types of animals preceding the earthly creation, and the mission of gods on earth.

Besides the Egyptian ideas already mentioned, Greek influence is seen in the characters of gods and in the episode of the earth spirit, and probably Indian influence in the Metempsychosis and the fire-sacrifice of spices, as by Apollonios. There is throughout this cosmology a vigorous and eventful chain of thought, entirely different to the maundering of later writers.

The ideas of this sermon are that the souls of men and animals are all alike, and Metempsychosis is assumed between human and animal bodies; the soul is individual, the work of God's hands and mind; its congress with the body is a concord wrought by God's necessity; at death it returns to its proper region. The reign of souls is between the moon and earth, for above the moon are the gods and stars and providence; the souls pass through air and wind without friction; their reign is divided into the four quarters of earth, higher the eight winds, higher sixteen spaces of subtler air, and highest thirty-two spaces of subtlest air; these are called zones, firmaments, or strata. The kingly souls occupy the highest, and so in order down to the base souls the lowest. There is a warder of souls, and a conductor to and from the bodies. Bodies are a blend of the four elements, each affecting the character.

First published in 1908, the Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece is a hermetic and pseudo-psychological mish-mash. Authorship is merely and mys-teriously attributed to “Three Initiates” who claim to convey to readers, in concise terms, the philosophy of the legendary wellspring of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus. The treatise touches upon several points that resonate with historic occult currents such as nothing ever ‘merely happens’; that there is no such thing as Chance; that while there are various planes of Cause and Effect, the higher dominating the lower planes, still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law. The Hermetists understand the art and methods of rising above the ordinary plane of Cause and Effect, to a certain degree, and by mentally rising to a higher plane they become Causers instead of Effects.

The masses (of people) are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves; heredity; suggestion; and other outward causes moving them about like pawns on the Chessboard of Life. But the Masters, rising to the plane above, dominate their moods, characters, qualities, and powers, as well as the environment surrounding them, and become Movers instead of pawns. They help to PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about by other wills and environment. They USE the Principle instead of being its tools. The Masters obey the Causation of the higher planes, but they help to RULE on their own plane. In this statement there is condensed a wealth of Hermetic knowledge – let him read who can.”

Link to translation of text:

http://yperboreia.org/KoreKosmou.pdf

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/woe/woe07.htm

Links to The Elements posts:

https://plus.google.com/+MarkDavidauthor/posts/gojnM5phpyA

Tombrobbers of the Ancient World

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The ancient Egyptian document Amherst Papyrus, now known as the Leopold II and Amherst Papyrus, is part of the original court records dealing with the tomb robberies under Ramesses IX and dates to Year 16 of Ramsesses IX. It contains the confessions of eight men who had broken into the tomb of Sobekemsaf II and a description of the reconstruction of the crime. It throws light on the practices followed at ancient Egyptian courts: eliciting confessions by beating with a double rod, smiting their feet and hands, reconstructing the crime on site, and imprisonment of suspects in the gatehouse of a temple. 

The document remains an important document for understanding the importance of burial and the afterlife in Ancient Egypt as well as crime and punishment practices in Egypt during the 20th Dynasty.

The Amherst-Leopold Papyrus is split in two halves: the lower half of the papyrus was bought in Egypt by Lord Amherst of Hackney in the middle of the 19th century, and sold to John Pierpont Morgan in 1913. 

In 1935 the missing upper part was found by the Belgian Egyptologist Jean Capart in the Musée d'arts at Brussels, and given the name Leopold II papyrus. This fragment had been hidden inside a wooden statuette which had been acquired by the future Belgian king Leopold II during one of his visits to Egypt in 1854 or 1862. As such efforts in coordinating the documentation and understanding of the Amherst-Leopold Papyrus have been difficult, unlike similar documents such as the Abbot Papyrus.

Tomb-robbing

Archeological data provides a lot of information about tomb robbers. We have actual written records, dated to the late XX'th dynasty, which describe the court trials of various people accused of tomb robbing in the Valley of the Kings. These records clearly tell us that tombs were robbed by the very same workers who had carved them out of the limestone cliffs of the Valley. The papyrus texts also implicate the mayor of Western Thebes and other Theban officials, who apparently knew about the illicit activities in the necropolis but did nothing to stop them, probably because they were getting a portion of the loot. 

The Amherst-Leopold Papyrus is of great importance in helping understand the culture of Ancient Egypt "and give[s] us more detail than we could ever have recovered from purely archeological evidence.” 

The document shows us the prevalence of tomb-robbing in Ancient Egypt and the rewards it offered, and demonstrates why people would perform the difficult and dangerous act of robbing a tomb. 

Tomb-robbing was a common feature in the Ancient World, and was very common in Egypt in particular: “it is a sad fact that the vast majority of ancient Egyptian tombs have been plundered in antiquity.” Efforts had been made in the past to discourage tomb-robbers, but it only served to increase their ingenuity and craft. At first the coffins themselves were made harder to open, and went from being made out of wood to stone, whilst entrances were sealed in a way to make it difficult for robbers to enter, secret burial chambers were then used to hide the bodies. Despite all the measures to stop these robbers, the lure of potential treasures during the hard times can be seen to have led to robberies like those described in the Amherst-Leopold Papyrus.

The punishments given for the crime itself also can be seen to be important, the harshness of impalement shows that tomb-robbing was taken very seriously. This suggests that the authorities either wanted to prevent future robberies by giving such harsh punishments and deter future tomb-robbers (even though it had not deterred those in the past), or it might show the importance of death and the afterlife in Ancient Egypt. The acts in robbing tombs, such as taking away funerary gifts and destroying coffins or even the bodies of the deceased, was thought to endanger their passage into the afterlife, and could be the reason for using such a violent and painful punishment. What we do know for sure is that this source is an interesting view into Egyptian culture and administration, giving us an idea of what life and the practices of Ancient Egyptians were like.

The actual content of the papyrus is concerned with the confessions of the perpetrators on the crime committed as well as the punishment handed out to them. The tomb that was robbed belonged to Sobekemsaf II and the crimes dated to Year 13 of Ramesses IX. Amenpnufer is shown as the main player in the robbery, and in his trial we are told that the amount of gold found in the pyramid came to 32 lbs. 

The robbery was not just limited to Sobekemsaf; “we also found the royal wife and collected all that we found on her. We took objects of gold, silver, bronze, and divided them amongst us.” 

Whilst the perpetrators admitted to committing the crimes, we know that crime and punishment during the time was not so fair or comfortable: “the robbers brought before investigators of the Twentieth Dynasty were questioned about their activities and witnesses were called to confirm or contradict their stories. Both the accused and the witnesses were beaten as an aid to their memories.”

Knowing this, it becomes harder to really judge whether those accused really were responsible for committing the crimes, although the description of the event would point towards the guilt of the accused: 

“We stripped off the gold, which we found on the august mummy of this god, and its amulets and ornaments which were at its throat, and the coverings wherein it rested.” 

The punishment we are given as listed is that of impalement, a punishment used for the most serious of crimes: “the punishment for violating a royal tomb: impalement.”

Punishments for Tomb Robbers

The punishments for those convicted as tomb robbers were extremely severe. Robbery, damaging tombs and the fencing of stolen tomb goods were criminal offences. Confessions was the base for a conviction together with circumstantial evidence and witness statements. Torture was used to achieve confessions. The initial methods of torture were whipping and beating. The arms, legs and back were beaten or whipped mercilessly to obtain a confession. Threats were made to cut off hands, ears and the nose. And in severe cases these threats were carried out as punishments. Death sentences were rare in Egypt compared with other ancient societies but robbers were executed. Executions took the form of impalement or been burnt alive. Both of these methods of execution had implications for the eternal life of the tomb robbers. To be burnt to ashes would mean that there was no body to pass into the afterlife and the sentence of impalement meant that the Ka would be forever tied to the place of execution. 

The world’s oldest writing

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We all know the alphabet - alpha - beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, itself developed from the Phoenician, the Phoenician being the ‘mother of all western writing systems’. 

The origins of writing is one of The Elements, a network of ideas that are being interwoven into an epic mystery-thriller story universe of the 20th century of the same name. The following is an amalgamation of sources from Wiki:

In her book, "A History of Sinai", Lina Eckenstein theorized that Serabit el-Khadim was the historical site of Mt. Sinai where Moses received the 10 commandments. This theory comes in no small part to the site containing a temple of Hathor which is believed to be the Golden Calf idol constructed by the Hebrews while Moses was on the mountain top. 

Thirty incised graffiti in a "Proto-Sinaitic script" shed light on the history of the alphabet in pre-phoenician times. Because the script co-existed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is likely that it represented true writing, but this is by no means certain.

The mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a Northwest Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew. The writing is believed to represent the language of this people.

The Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor (ḥwt-ḥr). The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years. Many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of "Asiatics", speakers of the Canaanite language that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew, who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta.

The Egyptian reads The beloved of Hathor, the mistress of turquoise, and according to Gardiner's translation, the Proto-Sinaitic reads m’hb‘l (the beloved of the Lady; m’hb beloved), with the final t of bʿlt (Lady) not surviving. 

Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser believes the script was most likely invented during the reign of pharaoh Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty.

It was generally accepted that the language of the inscriptions was Semitic, that the script had a hieratic prototype and was ancestral to the Semitic alphabets, and that the script was itself acrophonic and alphabetic (more specifically, a consonantal alphabet or abjad). The word baʿlat (Lady) lends credence to the identification of the language as Semitic. However, the lack of further progress in decipherment casts doubt over the other suppositions, and the identification of the hieratic prototypes remains speculative.

Expeditions of Pharaoh Amenemhet IV

Pharaoh Amenemhat IV sent four expeditions to the turquoise mines of the Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai are dated to his reign by in-situ inscriptions. The latest took place in his 9th year on the throne and could be the last expedition of the Middle Kingdom since the next inscription dates to Ahmose I's reign, some 200 years later.

Amenemhat IV sent another expedition to mine amethyst in the Wadi el-Hudi in the south of Egypt. Farther south, three Nile-records are known from Kumna in Nubia which are explicitely dated to his years 5, 6 and 7 on the throne, showing that the Egyptian presence in the region was maintained during his lifetime.

Important trade relations must have existed during his reign with the city of Byblos, on the coast of modern-day Lebanon, where an obsidian and gold chest as well as a jar lid bearing Amenemhat IV's name have been found. A gold plaque showing Amenemhat IV offering to a god may also originate from there.

Recently, continuing excavations at Wadi Gawasis on the Red Sea coast have produced two wooden chests and an ostracon inscribed with a hieratic text (priestly writing) mentioning an expedition to the fabled Land of Punt in the year 8 of Amenemhat IV, under the direction of the royal scribe Djedy.

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script#Proto-Sinaitic_script