"The Essential Egyptian View of The Self
The primary concepts of ancient Egyptian philosophy are expressed through a jargon of the soul. The terminology of these nine elements of the living human individual was known by every citizen of the ancient Nile culture, yet this knowledge survives in the modern world only in the form of the curious superstition of The Cat's Nine Lives. Sigmund Freud divided the human psyche into three parts -- id, ego, and superego -- and this awareness revolutionized our modern view of being human. Carl Jung divided psyche into four parts -- ego, shadow, self, and anim -- taking that revolution immeasurably further. In ancient Egypt psyche was divided into nine parts, or layers of being -- the akh, sekhem, ib, khat, shuit, ren, ba, ka, sahu. It was a revolution of thought by which they built an empire out of the mud, using pen and paper, string, rocks, and conversation. The goal of all these divisions of psyche -- three, four, or nine -- is self-awareness and natural self-control. The only significant difference between Egyptian psychological teaching and modern Western psychology is the place and function of the soul in the economy of the human psyche. The ancients did not question the existence of the divine soul; their entire civilization was built on belief in the soul's absolute reality and its absolute divinity. From ancient Egypt we learn that identity is the divinity of the soul.
1. AKH the divine substance of the human soul
2. SEKHEM the energy pattern of the divine spirit, the song of the soul
3. IB: the life-force, territory of the heart
4. KHAT: the soul's container, that which decays, "I stink therefore I am."
5. SHUIT: the living shadow, proof of reality
6. REN: the magic of your name, divine identity
7. BA: the you whom only you can know, the inside of the mask
8. KA: the you as others know you, the outside of the mask
9. SAHU: the natural boundary of the psychic self, horizon of the divine self
These terms for the nine parts of being represent the key elements of ancient Egyptian philosophy. They are the definition of self that every child in the nation learned at its mother's knee, the beliefs that guided their lives, and the primary vocabulary with which they talked about themselves. And it is clear from the remarkably vast body of their writings that has survived millennia of destruction that they talked endlessly together about themselves, their world, their lives and their beliefs. The experience of the immortal soul immersed in mortal existence is the central theme of all their stories, and the foundation of their civilization, and they created an exquisite language for its intricate, detailed, and poetic discussion.
Akh: Divine Substance of The Human Soul
The Egyptians perceived the living soul, AKH, to be that most essential part of each person, the actual, transcendent substance at the center of being, a particle of the divine plane inserted by divine force into the reality of space/time through the doorway of birth. This divine soul is clothed in flesh by entry into life, and this garment is cast off again in death. (Their garment of flesh, khat, was to them a most beloved cloak, however mortal. See below.)
In the beliefs of the ancient world, the soul is that part of you that you can never lose nor abandon. Your soul is not just who you are. Your soul does not just belong to you -- your soul is you. Your will never lose your soul. The Devil cannot take it away from you, no matter what you sign. Your soul can forget all the names and experiences of your many-layered human life, but your soul will always be you, the sense within your flesh that feels like you.
It is in the stories of Osiris that the soul's substance is explored. The sacred nature of the act of love opens the soul door, giving entry to the divine substance of the living soul. In ancient Egypt, life was not seen as inherently sinful, and nowhere in their writings is the concept of "original sin." They wrote much about the sin involved in actions and intentions in life, but saw no sin in being born. There was no exile from the garden of paradise because reality is paradise.
The hieroglyph determinative for akh, the soul, is a crowned stork or crane. These birds wading in the marshlands of the Nile stand as tall as a man, and live at the interface of the worlds of land, water and air, symbolizing the soul's ability to span the planes of existence. This image survives today in the superstition of the stork as the carrier of newborn babies, because the entrance of the soul into its garment of flesh is the beginning of life.
In their own words:
"I am this:
I am a soul inside the light,
appareled in flesh, designed and created by divine forces."
(Author's translation.)
Akh is still mistakenly translated as "spirit," since there is a current tendency to see the ba as representative of the soul. This comes out of modern confusion over the two concepts, soul and spirit, and the difficulty with ba and ka. (See below.) Spirit is related to breath and the motion around a center, images related to the energy of the soul rather than its substance.
Akh is the root of many words, differing by the determinative symbol which indicates the specific nuance of soul substance implied.
It is at the root of the word akht, arable land, the bodily essence of Osiris that flooded the land with the black mud that was its life's blood.
The akht or Uraeus serpents are the King Cobras of the Pharaoh's headpiece and adornment of the tomb, gesture of the energy.
Akht is the Eye of God, the awakened soul oriented properly to both inner and outer reality.
Akht is flame, body of energy, substance of heat.
Akht is the horizon where the Sun rises and sets, that divine thresholds between dimensions of reality, and the phrase "images of the horizon" is an idiom for "sacred images."
Akhty is the Horizon Dweller, another name for the Divine.
Akhu is the substance of the Sun, the sunlight itself.
Akh-akh is the verb, "to grow green," the primary activity of Osiris, transforming the black river mud to green shoots of plant life.
Akh-akh are the stars in the sky, believed to be the purified being of past souls.
Akh-akh are the spars of a ship, that which hold the sail open on the mast to catch the breath of wind -- and of life.
Sakh is the constellation Orion, which was believed in ancient Egypt to be the body of Osiris.
Sakh is the verb form of akh, translated by Faulkner as "spiritualize," and is the root of SKHM, the spirit or energy of the soul.
Sakhu are the ritual recitations, the language of the soul.
Sak is "to pull together" and is used with the word "heart" to mean "self-possessed."
(Raymond O. Faulkner's A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Griffith Institute, 1986, pages 4-5, 210-211.)
Ib: Life force, Territory of The Heart
IB is represented by a hieroglyph of the heart itself with the artery spouts attached. The symbol of the ib is not just the heart container, but also the actual pathway of the energy flowing through the heart. The energy which the soul draws from the spirit is translated through the darkness of flesh as life, biological, biochemical life.
Ib is the force by which the soul informs life.
Ib is the awareness of flesh of itself and its duty and needs. Ib is the energy of the soul's dance translated through the flesh itself, and experienced as the emotional, psychic world, the autonomic functioning of psyche that is outside conscious control; all those experiences of human life that we today still call "the territory of the heart," and to which we consign the mysteries of psychology, psychiatry, astrology, mythology, and so on. The heart was the seat of the passions in ancient Egypt, just as it is today. Ib is feeling, passion, courage, and joy of life. The ib-heart harbors the compassion which can save the world from itself.
The Haty-Heart: The ancients also distinguished finer shades of meaning in the functions of the ib, naming both ib and haty when referring to feelings. The haty-heart was represented by the foreparts of the lion, which was itself the symbol of Lady Sekhmet, goddess of fierce passion, linked with the ib-heart hieroglyph. The lion also represented that which is in the front, in the lead. The ib-heart is the entire life-process of emotional energy, indicating the greater existence of such energy. The haty-heart is the attitude, the mood of the moment, the emotion experienced at this time, the feelings that are in front, that lead life right now.
These dual identities of the ib-heart have energy and power that function as integral parts of the personality throughout life, but the haty-heart experiences a variety of feelings over time. Attitudes in childhood are different from those in later life. Love, hate, fear, apathy -- all can change the attitude of the heart completely. Attitudes change, but psychic energy, ib-heart energy, flows from birth to death.
"O my ib-heart which I had from my mother!
O my haty-heart of my different ages!"
(Author's translation, Spell 30b)
Ib is also the Egyptian determinative for "imagination," and "to imagine," for other words relating to the expression of life through non-rational experience. "Sailing to Heart's Centerpoint" was a metaphor for the transition of death, and the soul itself is referred to as "the great thing within the Heart's Centerpoint."
Khat: The Soul's Living Container of Flesh, That Which Decays: I stink, therefore, I am.
KHAT is translated as "that which decays," and is represented either by a mummy on its bier or by a stylized animal belly. Khat is the flesh we are born into, the flesh which clothes the divine soul. Khat is referred to as the garment of the soul, and the distinction between soul and flesh is made clearly.
Living flesh is the doorway between the spirit dimension of the soul's source and the physical dimension of reality. The reality of the Hidden Place, of the spiritual plane of the soul before birth and after death, was a powerful belief, and meditation on that belief was the science of those ages, accepted as logic and grounded in careful, empirical observations of nature, man, and life.
Those two utterly separate dimensions of reality are linked only by divine means, doorways, mystical passageways that communicate between the two dimensions. The immortal soul can pass through, but mortal flesh cannot.
The sacred nature of living flesh is in this paradox: that it can be both the absolute boundary between dimensions and also the only doorway capable of linking them. Flesh is both the key and the lock. The living body, activated by the male and produced by the female, is more than just the vessel of the soul. This divine power of the khat is represented in artwork and architecture by the "soul door," a false doorway carved or painted on the wall in both the birthing chamber and the tomb. The soul door marks out the sanctum where such divine doorways are opened.
The Egyptian appreciation of the magical vessel of the body is very unlike the modern, Western view of the flesh. The goal of Egyptian spiritual training was to identify yourself with your soul within, and to respect, keep and maintain the magical container which carries you through life as elegantly and carefully as humanly possible. Their medical technology was more involved with daily care and comfort than the wartime inspiration that has driven other research.
The respect given to the miraculous potential of the body to house a divine soul reaches a pinnacle in mummification and the wealth of tomb objects. The body, as a reward for its service, is rendered inedible, safe from attack by the wild beasts that haunt graveyards and eat dead flesh. It is provided with every need, and allowed to rest, safe and secure, with all its favorite and lovely "toys" at hand. The soul has moved on to the other side of reality, where flesh cannot be, animated and energized by the host of images and memories of life. The body, left behind on this side of reality, can at last rest. "He who dies with the most toys wins" is a remarkably Egyptian sentiment, however modern the words.
Shuit: The Living Shadow, Contact With Solid Reality
SHUIT, (also KHAIBIT), your shadow, (sometimes "shade") is proof that you are real; proof that you stand in the cold, white light of reality. The physical body, the khat, casts a shadow. Unreal things do not cast shadows. (For example, people and objects rarely cast shadows in dreams.) A shadow is proof of the solid reality of the thing which cast it, and shadow and object are intimately and uniquely related to each other.
Whatever the physical meaning of the shadow, it was self-evident to the ancients that every man, child, and cat had one. The shadow faithfully duplicates every move and gesture. The shadow is a unique possession. It cannot be lost or separated from you. It is a lifelong companion. Whatever a person might lose in life, your shadow is proof that you cannot lose yourself.
Shadows are the footprints of the Sun. Daily time in the experience of waking reality is measured by the shadow's slow and stately dance with the Sun, and even solid, inanimate objects have animated shadows. Indeed, the measure of the great, round Earth was taken by a shadow. The shadow is the soul's marker in space and time, binding it to the Earth. It is as inescapable a metaphor in the inner world as is the Sun in the outer. The Egyptians did not limit their survey of the soul's dimension just to the soul itself, but were equally concerned with the place of the living soul together with other living souls in the world.
Ren: Divine Identity, The Magic of Your Name
Identity was a crucial concept in the ancient world and a major focal point of Egyptian philosophy. Identity is the divinity of the soul. Ren is the social name you are given but that name is related to your absolute identity just as the face is related to the soul. The name you are known by is different from the DNA name which defines you as you. Just as the substance of the soul is defined separately from its energy, the absoluteness of identity is defined separately from the name. The face is the visual name of the flesh, and is often addressed as an individual in the texts. "Oh, face and head of the heart!"
Names were important in ancient Egypt, and everywhere the soul is referred to as "the designer of his name and designer of the name of his flesh." Naming is everywhere in their writing and art. Names are metaphors of identity, metaphors of social place, landmarks of the soul's journey through life, and all the texts are about the soul's journey through life to eternity.
Ba: The You Whom Only You Can Know, The Inside of Your Soul's Mask
BA is represented by a crowned head atop the body of a Horus-falcon or sometimes a kite, bird of the protecting spirits of Isis and Nepthys. It is sometimes shown fluttering over the tomb, or with the mummy, and is present in many scenes of the tomb's art. The ba has been variously interpreted as the soul, or vital force, or as one of "multiple souls."
The ba is the private, inner experience of being within every person. Ba is the self, a composite entity created by a merger of archetype and individuation. The ba is the soul as it knows itself from within, from the inside of the mask. The ba is the symbol par excellence of the self, a complete, living, conscious being. The ba is also the ultimate privacy, for it is that experience of being from within, which can be communicated, imaged and evaluated, but not shared. No one can experience another's experience of being.
Ba is also the ultimate democracy and paradox, for although each of us experiences reality uniquely, because we are human, our unique experience is each unique in exactly the same, human way. I cannot know what you are feeling, but I can know that you feel to yourself as real as I feel to myself, and just as human.
The bird's body represents the universal biological standard. In the head, however, the soul is unique, crowned by its individual identity. The language of ancient Egypt does have generic terminology for such concepts as "humanity," "man," "woman," etc. However, when referring to the psychology of the soul's experience of life and death, the term for self is ba. This term implies a conscious, named entity; someone who could be known.
As a symbol of the self, the ba is the sum total of an individual merged into a single focus. The ba is not consciousness in and of itself, but it is the only vehicle which will support consciousness. The ba is the dark magic of the flesh out of which consciousness is born like the Sun rising out of the night at dawn. The ba is addressed often in tomb art because the belief was that you would still experience yourself as yourself even through the processes of the interface of realities. The focus of the rituals was to maintain the coherency of that self-experience despite the rending transition from time to eternity. Your flesh will be cut away, but you will still be you there within your soul. That coherency of experience is embodied in the ba.
There is a profoundly moving piece, "The Dialog of A Man And His Ba," in which a man talks himself out of suicide. That is a completely internal debate, a conversation with your own inner experience of your life, where no one else can stand.
The ba is shown with a human head and bird body because the inner self is always different from the outer self, freer and traveling on winged thought. No matter what attention and memory your ka is receiving from the living, you are the only one who will experience the transition to the next life entered through the tomb. Those haunting images of the ba fluttering alone over the coffin hint at the ultimate privacy of the experience.
It is too easy to attribute so much 'alienness' to their distant lives that their meanings become impossible, but they were the same kind of human beings that we are, and only the specifics of their environment and understanding differ from our own imagery.
The ba, however, represents only a portion of the ma'at of consciousness, since the religion of ancient Egypt was also concerned with the place of the living soul within the reality of the outside world.
Ka: The Public Self, The Outside of Your Soul's Mask
The symbol of the KA is a pair of outstretched arms offering embrace. The ka is the essence of the "relatedness" of living beings met out in reality, where shadows entwine. The ka is the mask of the self that is seen by others on the outside. The ka is the person whom others see, the person as seen by other ba.
Each of us sees other people from his or her own point of view, and no one can know the inner experience of someone else's soul. That is the ultimate privacy. The ka is the outside of the mask, and your soul can experience only the inside of your own mask.
The ka is a slippery concept for the modern mind to grasp. It is a concept we deal with in every moment of civilized life, yet we have been unable to describe it without using a confusing array of terms and conflicting ideas. Most Egyptologists dismiss the complexity of the ka in Egyptian writing and art by translating it simply as being one of "multiple souls," thus reducing this profoundly sophisticated religious philosophy to the level of pagan superstition.
It is no coincidence that ka is a pun on the Egyptian language particle for "you" in verbs, as in "you are doing this." The ka is the outside of the self, the outer mask whom only other people can see. The ka is shown in their art as a duplicate of the individual -- there is you as you know yourself, and then there is the you whom others see, the outside of you.
The ka is depicted as being born with the child because everyone else knows you will be born long before you do. They know you before you know yourself. Your survivors will remember you as your ka after you yourself have gone. Other people see your ka in the ceremonies and important moments of your life -- but you cannot. You can only know yourself from the inside. You cannot know how others see you.
The truth is that each of us deals with the ka every day. It survives in modern words such as "character" and "charisma." The portrait, family photo album, the public reputation, the boss, the celebrity, the public image, superstar, teen idol, cult figure, and friend -- these are all forms of the ka.
The Egyptians describe the ka of each individual as being born before the child itself is born. This is because the parents and their friends know of the child's existence before its birth; others are aware of the reality of the soul clothed in infant flesh long before the soul is conscious of itself.
In their own words:
"You will see the face of everyone except the face of your own flesh,
while your father and your son guard the face of their faces."
(Author's translation)
The ka lives on after death through the memories of the dead that the living keep alive in their own inner worlds. This principle has been practiced continuously for thousands of years, right into the present day. Many famous movie actors are now dead, but each actor's ka on the screen "comes to life" whenever movies are watched by the living. The ghosts of the silver screen are, in a sense, the most distilled examples of the concept of the ka. The soul of Humphrey Bogart has passed on, but Bogart, as "King of the Silver Screen," is still alive (and still earning money!) That is the ka.
A person's ka can be shaped and its image changed. Your soul is yours and yours alone, but your ka can be stolen, ruined, humiliated, or changed, no matter how unchanged you are inside your mask. The ka can be deceitful and betray its owner. The ka can work for you or against you, even without your awareness of its working. The public image and the private self can diverge greatly, and much ancient and modern literature and art is based on the conflict and bond between the two.
The ka is the central figure of ancient Egyptian morality, for the realm of the ka encompasses all aspects of human social and personal interaction. The mask of the ka that you show to the world marks you as a civilized person or a barbarian, friend or foe, acceptable or unacceptable, yet your ba can never see its own ka except in reflection (or, in modern times, recorded on film or video, but even then, you cannot know how others perceive you).
There is an entire class of ancient literature, called "instructions," based on advice to the ka and how to behave in the presence of ka of higher rank. It is all good advice, even today. There are careful, mature suggestions for polite and civilized behavior in the presence of a ka of greater rank, and generous, caring behavior in the presence of those of lesser rank. These are all about public roles, and public behavior.
The mind-games one can play of "It's not me -- it's you," come naturally to every child learning any language, and are the birth of the awareness of the reality of other people and their unique perspective.
The image is also profoundly condensed in the determinative for the ka, which is a pair of human arms stretching out, the reach of the human embrace, measuring out the distance from me to you. Even the ambiguity of the gesture is deliberate -- are the arms reaching upward or outward? In the presence of ka of higher rank, the arms are stretched upward, in the gesture of bowing or prostrating before them, and in the presence of ka of equal or lesser rank, the arms are stretched outward, in embrace.
The nation along the Nile was humanity's first serious attempt at this kind of civilized cooperation on a multi-regional base, and the careful rules of human interaction and individuation were the bedrock on which they built their unity. The Nile muds might wash away physical boundaries, but the cooperation of everyone kept personal territories respected and aligned.
American culture is steeped in reverence for the ka of great individuals, we just don't have as succinct a word for the concept. Look at all the party events that were scheduled recently around the "celebration" for John Lennon on the anniversary of his death. It is his ka they revere. Even his closest friends and lovers have acknowledged -- publicly in People magazine -- that no one knew what Lennon was going through inside of the Beatles' image. We can imagine the experience of his ba, of being the person inside a living myth, but only he can ever really know how it was to be a Beatle.
Sahu: Natural Boundary of The Psychic Self, The Shape of Eternity
A lifetime on top of the Earth is spent adapting to reality, defining the boundaries of self and not-self. This sense of the shape and feel of the boundaries of being alive is the SAHU.
The sahu is often represented as a mummy lying on a bier, because the awareness of the body's individual shape and function provides the soul with a sense of shape and boundary in the transition between the dimensions of this world and the next. The sahu is the self-defined psychic boundary.
Modern studies of the human brain have also found the sahu: the cerebellum maintains a constant electromagnetic replica of the body-self, a glowing self-image that is the true experience of being alive. The sahu is described as a being of glowing light. The stars in the night sky were thought to be the glowing souls of great beings shining from heaven. The sahu does not decay or die. It is as immortal as the immortal soul which it defines.
This phantom body exists primarily to be activated in the next life as the identity of the soul in the spiritual dimension. The sahu is the immortal imprint of the mortal khat upon the soul. The process of evolving the unique identity of the soul has come full circle: the khat which is defined by the soul's energy defines the shape of the soul in the spiritual dimension to which it returns.
These nine parts are the shorthand terms for the fundamentals of this ancient philosophy stripped down to the dry, intellectual essentials of self. They represent the definition of self that every child in the nation learned at mother's knee. These are the beliefs that guided their lives and the primary vocabulary with which they talked about themselves.
It is in the personification of these ideas as the living Natur, however, that the richness of their religion developed. The experience of the soul's immortality immersed in mortal existence is the central story of all their stories and the foundation of their civilization. No other civilization has maintained its images and culture intact for as long as ancient Egypt did, and there is much value to be found in their timeless philosophy.
The Natur, or "gods" of ancient Egypt, developed as the Ennead, the "Greater and Lesser Pots of God," tell the stories of humanity, and the temples of their worship were dedicated to mankind's respect for itself."
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