Sharing what we find free and maintaining a focus on the wonderful Positive influence of the Goddess Isis and our fascination with her.
Offering to Isis
BY M. ISIDORA FORREST
Birth of Isis. Feast of "revealing the face" of this goddess with her ennead. Performing all the rites of the feast of robing . . . according to the ritual of the place of the First Feast. They make a great oblation of bread, beer, oxen, fowl, wine, milk, pomegranate-wine, [gazelles, oryx, ibex], cranes, pigeons, fattened ducks, with fresh vegetables and all fruit. It is sweet to serve the Beautiful One with right offerings! -The Denderah Festival Calendar
Each night while I sleep, the light is withdrawn, and a darkened world returns to primordial chaos. This disorder is Isfet, the opposite of Mayet-Rightness, Truth. Like dark water, Isfet is of infinite, even frightening possibility. Will it seep up moist like ground water, like dreams, to nourish growth and change? Or will it burst forth, unchecked, unsettling, and destructive? Anything might happen. Anything might exist out there in night's shadowed darkness.
The formlessness of the unillumined world is why I welcome with full heart the awakening of the Golden One each morning. As She scatters Her gold dust across the world-bringing light, creating form-I release my breath to Her in relieved sighs. I am Her servant. I serve the Great Goddess Isis. "Ise" is how we whisper Her holy name. I am called The First of Those Who See Her, for it is my privilege and duty to open Her shrine, unveil Her face, and make offering to Her each morning. I know better than most how sweet it is to serve the Beautiful One with right offerings.
While Isfet is still trembling at the edges of the world, I rise and make my purifications. My body, which will perform the ritual, is made pure with water. My mouth, which will speak the words of power, is made pure with natron. It is salty, and if I have much to purify, it sometimes makes me gag. When I am cleansed, I put on the white linen and white sandals and walk through the night-cooled corridors of the temple toward Her closed shrine.
The cooks, the bakers, the butchers have already been at work. They have prepared Her morning feast. The Pure Ones, the Wab priests and priestesses, have placed it in the Hall of Offerings, and even now they chant for Her. The sistra of the priestesses rattle softly as I pass through the Hall of Offerings to finally stand before the closed doors of Her shrine.
Into the darkness before that sacred place, I speak the words that avert evil so that I may approach, giving no offense and receiving no harm. I break the clay seal. I draw back the bolt, but I do not yet open the doors. First I must offer incense to Her Eye, the fierce and fiery Serpent Goddess Who guards the Great One-another of Isis' kheperu, Her forms. When that Fierce One has taken Her pleasure and been pacified by the incense and the words of my mouth, I open the doors. Heaven and Earth open before me!
On my knees, I enter Her shrine, offering incense. The sweet smoke rises into the still air to encircle the Iset Weret, the Great Seat or Throne of the Goddess, Her innermost holy place. My heart remembers one of the Mysteries of my temple: Isis is both She Who is Upon Her Throne, and also the Throne itself, for that is the very meaning of Her name. Isis is All Things; it is a great secret that I know as I prostrate myself before the Goddess Throne. I kiss the ground. My belly touches the Earth before Her. I speak the Adoration of the Goddess with all my heart. As they do every morning that I wear the white sandals to serve my Goddess, tears blur the vision of my eyes when I lift the Goddess' veil to look upon Her beautiful face.
Isis is alive in Her sacred image. The Goddess is at home in Her temple. I can feel Her magic vibrate within the shrine. Her ka speaks to mine. I bid Her peace in awakening. In Her presence, I purify the food offerings with water and with incense. I name what we have prepared for Her. She smiles at me with golden lips.
I am now privileged to touch Her image. I take Her sacred body from the Great Throne into the shrine chamber. I wipe away yesterday's unguent, She having received its ka. With the little finger of my right hand, with my gentle finger, I anoint the uraeus upon Her brow anew with Eye of Horus Oil. It makes Her limbs whole. It destroys evil like the strong talons of Her falcon child.
I remove the linen cloths placed upon Her image the day before. They will be taken away and washed. With Her unclothed image before me, I adore Her four times. I feel tender toward the Goddess Whose body I touch. I speak only truth before Her. My adorations are never rote. I speak heart-words to my Goddess. As I reclothe Her in fresh linens-the white, the green, and the red-I purify with natron between each dressing. I purify again with water and incense. I circle Her image four times before returning it to its seat.
Once more upon Her Great Throne, Isis receives Her ornaments and implements of power. I place them upon Her body. I offer Her precious unguents, full of strength. I take up pure sand, and with ancient and holy words, I pour it out before Her. It grits beneath my white sandals as I enfold Her image, first in the white head cloth, then in the Great Cloth. Now She is veiled once more in the protection of the Weaving Goddesses, Who spin magic into linen.
Again I offer incense and circle Her living image four times. I take up the bundle of heden plants. As I back out of the shrine, I use them to sweep the sand clean, obliterating my footprints and returning the holy place to its primordial perfection. I close the doors, bolt them. Outside, I offer incense upon the brazier and circle the room four times, speaking protections.
By the time the rite is complete, the sun is high above the horizon. Day has come. Isfet is banished. The face of Isis shines like molten gold as She smiles upon Egypt. I am content.
Offering and Relationship
Human beings have always made offering to their Deities. Many have also honored their dead with offerings, as the ancient Egyptians did.
Our ancestors offered the choicest cut of meat to the Great Hunter Who had helped them in their hunt. They gave the first handful of ripe berries to the Wild Mother Who had guided them to the mouth-watering cache. They shared their holy days and good fortune by offering feasts to their dead. They filled temples with sumptuous meals and beautiful scents for the Goddesses and Gods. They created art in enduring stone and precious metals and offered it to the Divine Houses.
Many of us continue to make offering today. Some Christian church members tithe, giving offerings to support the work of their church. Hindu devotees offer daily puja to their Deities. Tibetan Buddhists make offering of fire and pure water. Neo-Pagans offer fresh flowers and incense on the altars of their Goddesses and Gods. Artists of all faiths still create in the name of the Divine and offer their creations back to their Divine inspirers. It seems that there is an inborn impulse in us to make offering.
One modern example of that impulse concerns the Seattle Troll. Large enough to hold a VW Beetle in one hand, staring out of a single, glassy eye, the Seattle Troll lives beneath the Aurora Bridge in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. He was originally a work of art funded by the city, but he has become something more. He has become a "Work of Art" and now receives offerings from passersby and neighborhood residents.
The day I visited-not a special day, just a weekday like any other-the Troll was supplied with an amazing array of offerings. There were fresh flowers, smoked almonds, jewelry, coins, jams, a bag of ripe cherries, a whole watermelon, a bright pink-orange slab of raw salmon, a whole Dungeness crab, a bar of soap, a pack of cigarettes, two coffee mugs, and two t-shirts. These offerings were fresh, too-the flowers and food as yet unwilted. At first, it looked like someone had temporarily left their picnic, but no. The votives were carefully arranged upon the enormous hands of the Troll. They were clearly presented, and no picnickers were to be found. The items were offerings, nothing less.
The fact that people expend their energy, time, and money in making offering to the Troll is surely one of the things that has made him come alive. The vivified Troll now serves as a focus for the neighborhood, celebrating with residents during local festivals like "Trolloween," and lamenting with them in tragedy. After a particularly terrible bus accident in the area, a large tear appeared beneath the eye of the Troll.
I doubt that any of those who offer to the Troll see him as a Deity-at most, he's a quirky neighborhood spirit. Yet, people leave offerings just the same. Perhaps it's because when we make offering, we are seeking relationship. In the case of the Troll, perhaps we seek connection with the progressive spirit of the neighborhood. Maybe the Troll's mere existence gives us a chuckle and we offer a gift of thanks, connecting with those who share our amusement, or with the Troll's artist-creators. If we participate in the Trolloween festival, we come into relationship with other revelers.
In a spiritual context, making offering can be a joyful sharing of blessings with the Deity or spirits with whom we have or seek a relationship. As an act of gift-giving, offering is a universal way to create the sweet bonds of interconnection and ongoing reciprocity between giver and receiver. Offering encourages generosity in the giver. Some Tibetan Buddhists say that it is this growing generosity in ourselves that pleases the Deities, rather than the actual offerings. Offering can be a meditation, a prayer, a way to honor tradition, an act of devotion, a method of giving thanks, a path to greater openness of spirit.
Of course, like most things, offering can also be abused. At its worst, it is a fruitless attempt at Divine bribery; but this is only true when the offering is given out of fear or out of a desire to manipulate, rather than being motivated by love or joy. In this book, we're concerned with the latter type of offering: offerings of love, appreciation, joy, growth, and connection. Specifically, we are concerned with the offering tradition of ancient Egypt-as well as its modern Neo-Egyptian inspiration and reinterpretation-as a way to develop and deepen a relationship with the Great Egyptian Goddess Isis. (For more on creating a relationship with Isis, please see my book Isis Magic, Llewellyn, 2001.)
Weaving Connections
The spread offered to the Troll pales in comparison with the offerings provided each day in the ancient temples of the Egyptian Deities. Making offering was essential to the Egyptian relationship with the Divine, while the relationship itself was essential to the proper functioning of the universe. The Egyptians knew that the universal order hinged upon the ongoing, interwoven relationship between Divine and human, natural and supernatural. If human beings failed to provide right worship to the Deities-a significant part of which was the act of making offering-the world would dissolve into chaos and the Goddesses and Gods would not have the energy required to maintain and renew the physical universe. Offering was considered such a key part of the functioning of the universe that there are numerous representations of Deities making offering to each other. At Isis' temple at Philae, the Goddess was known to make libation offerings to Her beloved Osiris every ten days. The temple calendar from Esna notes that She also made offering to Osiris (and to another Deity Whose name is lost) on the tenth day of the first month of the season of Inundation.
The literal nourishment of the Deities was a main function of offering. For example, one of the inscriptions at Osiris' great temple complex at Abydos in northern Upper Egypt says that the king endows the offering tables of Osiris, fills His house with fresh greens, and pours Him libations from golden vessels so that the God "may live.
Offerings were also given to thank the Goddesses and Gods for what They had provided to humankind. In one of the hymns to Hapi, the Nile God Whose flooding enriched Egyptian fields, the hymnist offers a feast to Hapi, stating, "your generosity is repaid to you." Harvest was always a time for such thank offerings. As the Goddesses and Gods gave the food of the harvest to human beings, so They were always given a share of the abundance in return.
It was also important that the person making the offering be worthy-which explains why offering made by the Deities was particularly powerful. In a text known as the Instruction for Merikare, one of the Egyptian "wisdom texts," the king is advised to do monthly service as a temple priest. As a priest, one of his tasks is to increase the daily offerings because it is "good for the future." Later in the same text, the king is reminded that the character of the giver is more important than the offerings themselves, for the "good character of a righteous man" is more acceptable to the Divine than the "splendid ox" of a wrongdoer.
At the same time, the offerent (the person making offering) expected to receive benefits from her or his generosity. In the same way that the Deity gave and received in return, so the giver gave, then received from the Deity. In the chapel of Sokar at Abydos, the king asks Sokar to accept a bread offering "that I may live, that I may be joyful, that I may unite with thee." By giving and receiving, receiving and giving, the connections between human and Divine, Divine and human, were eternally woven and rewoven. The interdependence between the worlds was continually strengthened and sweetened by the giving of gifts.
The Place of Offering: Ancient Altars
In prehistoric times, Egyptians placed their gifts on small woven-reed mats. The most characteristic offering was a cone-shaped loaf of bread or a small pile of grain or flour. The conical loaf or heaped grain on a mat was so typical that a stylized version of it became the hieroglyph hotep, which is used in words such as "offering" and "altar," and was the most common word for "offering."
In Egyptian representations of offering scenes, the bottom of the hotep sign-the mat-always faces the Deity or spirit receiving the offering. Eventually, the hotep glyph became a symbol of plenty and generosity, and was sometimes shown carried by Deities associated with food and fertility. Hotep also signifies the concepts of rest, peace, happiness, and satisfaction. The idea behind this extension of hotep's meaning is that offerings are given in gratitude and received in grace, leading to satisfaction and peace for both giver and receiver. The Egyptians also used the word hotep as a salutation. People wished each other peace and satisfaction-and, by implication, many offerings-in their daily comings and goings. The word is still used as a greeting by some modern devotees of the Egyptian Deities.
There is a common offering formula-that is, ritual words spoken when making an offering-known as the hotep di nisu. It translates as "an offering that the king gives." It was commonly used when the king was depicted making offering, since all the offerings given to the Deities symbolically came from the king. As the Divine Son, the king was the most appropriate offerent, the one with the most possible merit. The hotep di nisu formula was also used in funerary inscriptions for offerings to the dead. In this case, the Egyptians employed the power of the king's superior connection to the Divine to ensure that the deceased would receive her or his offerings in peace. Sometime during the Old Kingdom, stone offering tables and altars replaced the traditional reed mat; nevertheless, these new altars were usually either built in the shape of the traditional hotep glyph or inscribed with it. Offering tables for the dead included the hotep sign on only one side, to face the dead. Those for the Deities had hotep glyphs on all four sides, perhaps signifying the Deity's more encompassing nature. In addition, altars were frequently carved with cups or channels designed to receive liquid offerings as well as with images of a selection of the most desirable offerings. In magical effect, the inscribed altar would never be empty. From the end of the Old Kingdom onward, funerary offerings were painted in the tomb or on the sarcophagus more frequently than being included physically.
The Daily Offering Rite
Much of what we know about the way ancient Egyptians made daily offering in the temples comes from two sources: texts inscribed on the walls of six chapels at Osiris' great temple complex at Abydos and a papyrus describing the cult of Amun and Mut at Karnak. The Abydos texts are the most complete of any temple where the rite is depicted. While the Ptolemaic temples of Horus at Edfu and Hathor at Denderah also include some abbreviated scenes showing the daily offering rites, they don't compare to what is available from Abydos. The papyrus that records the ritual from Karnak is even more complete and provides many more specific ritual acts.
Fortunately for Isis devotees, the texts from Abydos include a record of the daily rites performed there for Isis. While scholars are nearly certain that rites similar to the ones from Abydos and Karnak were performed in every Egyptian temple, because of the Abydos texts, we can be positive that such rites were conducted there for Isis. The offering ritual imagined at the beginning of this chapter is based on the Isis offering rites from Abydos.
The daily offering ritual maintained and cared for the sacred image of the Deity-and through the image, the Deity Her- or Himself. It was performed at least twice per day, in the morning and the evening; in some temples it was performed at noon as well. Ideally, the king-as Egypt's highest high priest-would have conducted the ritual, but since he clearly couldn't be in every temple every day, the temple's high priest conducted the rites in his stead.
Each morning, the Goddess or God of the temple was awakened and adored through the sacred image. The priest conducted a series of purifications and washed, dressed, and anointed the image. Then the Deity received an elaborate meal that included a variety of meats, vegetables, fruits, water, milk, wine, and beer, all of which had been purified by sprinkling them with water from the temple's sacred lake or the Nile itself. Once the ablutions and meal were completed, the priest closed the shrine and swept away his footprints to leave the shrine pure and untouched. The noon and evening rites were similar to the morning rite, though less elaborate. The evening offering rite also included resealing the Deity's shrine to protect Her or Him throughout the night. (Although this is a generally accepted reconstruction of the order of events, there is room for debate. The temple texts do not exactly match the Karnak liturgy, and no numbering sequence is given in any of the texts.)
Only a symbolic array of bread and cakes, representing all the food offerings, actually entered the shrine. The rest of the Deity's meal remained on an altar before the shrine or in a Hall of Offerings immediately outside the sanctuary area. Once the main temple Goddess or God had taken Her or His fill, the offerings were shared with all the other Deities honored in that temple. When They had enjoyed the meal, it was offered to the spirits of the kings and other nobles who had statues in the temple. If the temple was near a necropolis, the food might also be offered to the spirits of the dead. Finally, the food reverted from its sacred state to a normal state-this is known as the "reversion of offerings"-and was divided up among the priests, priestesses, and other temple personnel. Thus none of the food was wasted, and it was possible to feed the large staff required for the upkeep and operation of the vast temple complexes.
Personal Offering Rites
The offering rites in the temples were part of the ongoing and vital relationship between the human and the Divine. They provided for the welfare of the Egyptian Deities, the king, the land, and the people of Egypt. Yet private individuals had their own relationships with the Goddesses and Gods and wanted to make personal offering as well.
Evidence for personal offerings made within the temples ranges from inexpensive beads to finely carved statues. This probably indicates that both rich and poor could make offering there. Yet very few of the offerings include text to explain precisely why they were given, so we can only guess based on the type of offering. For example, votive images of the Goddess Hathor or of a female figure may have been offered either to thank the Goddess for Her help in women's health and/or fertility matters, or to ask for such help. The many offerings depicting human ears were likely to have been requests for the Deity to "hear" the worshipper (see "Ear" later in this book). Isis is one of the Deities most known to hear Her worshippers; She received many such offerings.
People could also make offering to the sacred animals associated with the Goddesses and Gods. Since the animals were considered to be the actual manifestation of the Deity, making offering to the animal was just as good as making offering to the sacred images within the temples-and generally, the animals were more accessible to the common person. Many people noted the feeding of sacred animals as among the good deeds they had done on behalf of the Goddesses and Gods during their lifetimes. For example, a grave stele from the end of the dynastic period notes that the deceased gave bread to the hungry, clothed the naked, and gave food to the ibis, falcon, cat, and jackal-the sacred animals of Thoth, Horus, Bast, and Anubis.
The Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri (see my Isis Magic and "Divination in the Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri" in The Golden Dawn Journal for more on the papyri, both by Llewellyn) provide more evidence for personal offering practice. Incense, fruit, bread, milk, honey, wine, oil, and flowers were common offerings in the papyri rites. While no rites that are strictly offering rites have been found in the texts that have so far come to light, many of the workings include making offering as part of the ritual. Since it seems clear that many of the papyri rites were adapted from rituals that were originally conducted in the temples (both Greek and Egyptian), it seems reasonable to assume that the temple offering rites would have been adapted and used for personal practice outside of the temples as well.
Types of Offerings
The offerings mentioned in the papyri were probably quite typical of the gifts people offered their Deities and their dead during their personal practice. Of course, these things were also among the offerings given in the temples, although the temple offerings were far more extravagant. A text in the New Kingdom funerary temple of Ramesses II records that the king gave Amun offerings of bread and beer, bulls, desert game, wine, fruit, "pure incense in your presence," gold and silver altars, libations from the sacred lake "which I dug," as well as priests to present these offerings "to your spirit." The wealth of the kings also provided the temple Deities with jewelry, clothing, votive statues, inscribed stelae, obelisks, and even cargo ships with all their cargo.
The largest category of offerings, however, was food provided for the nourishment and well-being of the Deity and for sustaining the deceased. Dozens of different types of cakes and breads were offered. There were plates of biscuits, some shaped into the form of lions or falcons. Fresh fruit overflowed in offering baskets-grapes, figs, persea fruit, and dates. There were vegetables of all kinds: corn, onions, leeks, and bundles of greens. There were spices-especially cumin-and cooking oils. The Egyptian Deities also received a wide variety of meat offerings. Normally, these were in the form of prepared foods. Butchery was generally handled in the temple butcher shops, not upon the altars of the Goddesses and Gods; however, there were times when the Egyptians did offer sacrifices upon the altars, and even made burnt offerings. In these cases, the sacrificed animal was identified with the enemy of the Deity to Whom it was given. For example, desert-dwelling animals representing the desert God Set, the enemy of Osiris, might be killed during a festival for Osiris. Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, mentions that the Egyptians mourned the sacrificial victim as the flames consumed its carcass.
In addition to nutritional value, food offerings also had symbolic value. Lettuce, for example, might be given to a Fertility God such as Min as a symbol of His life-preserving sexual potency. Bread was baked into conical loaves (see "Bread" later in this book) to connect it with the solar symbolism of renewal and rebirth also associated with obelisks. Among the many types of breads and cakes offered to the Deities is an interesting entry in a list of offerings for the Opet Festival for more than two thousand loaves of "Bread of Presence," which surely had a symbolic meaning.
The Egyptians offered beverages to their Goddesses and Gods as well. Milk was given as a symbol of renewing life (see "Milk"). With its wealth of sexual, fertile, renewing, and purifying symbolism, Nile water (see "Water") was a common offering. Wine was also a favored offering, for it not only shared, but also expanded the symbolism of water. Like water, wine is creative, rejuvenating, and an emblem of the yearly food-bringing flood, the Inundation. But wine also undergoes a magical transformation. The grape must "die"-be crushed and fermented-in order to be resurrected as joyful wine. Due to this transforming resurrection, wine was associated with Isis' husband Osiris, the God Who is transformed and resurrected at the hand of Isis the Magician. Beer, too, shares this fermenting transformation and was a very common offering. Because of their intoxicating qualities, both wine and beer were thought to appease the Deities-and so to promote Mayet (see "Mayet Feather"). Just as the alcohol in wine and beer can break down barriers between human beings, so can it open communication between human and Divine, promoting religious connection and even ecstasy. The Egyptians specifically used both in this way during some festivals for Hathor. Isis Herself was called Lady of Wine and Beer, and the Greeks connected Her star, Sothis, with wine because its heliacal rising coincided with the beginning of the grape harvest (see "Wine").
Nonfood offerings were symbolic, too. The scent of the thousands of bouquets offered to the Goddesses, Gods, and the dead both invoked and announced Divine presence, for the Deities were known to manifest amidst gorgeous scents (see "Lotus" and "Perfume"). Bouquets also symbolized life and resurrection because the Egyptian words for "bouquet" and "life" share the same consonants. At Abydos, the king offers a neck decoration to Osiris so that His "voice may be loud" and that He may "become Khepri," a solar God associated with resurrection. In an offering list from a festival at Karnak, there is a listing for 260 "falcon's feathers from the treasury of the pharaoh." We may presume that the falcon feathers symbolized the power of the Falcon God, Horus, with whom the pharaoh was identified. Another offering list included lotus leaves in jars, surely representing the renewal symbolized by the lotus. Anointing oils not only had lovely aromas and so, like flowers, announced Divine presence, but they were also protective. Just as oil protected the body of the deceased from decay, it could also protect both human and Divine beings from evil.
Actions could also be considered offerings. Acts of ritual were acts of offering. Music, dance, song, participation in processions and festivals-all could be offerings to the Goddesses and Gods.
The Eye of Horus
Yet, all these offerings could be symbolized by a single, quintessential offering. It was the Udjat Eye, most often the Eye of Horus, but sometimes the Eye of Re. The eyes of the Sky Gods Horus and Re were identified as the Sun and the Moon. Since udjat means healthy, whole, and uninjured, the Udjat Eye was a symbol of perfection. The wholeness of the Eye was vital. A myth explains it: When Horus' archenemy, Set, tore out and destroyed Horus' Eye, imbalance-Isfet-ensued. To restore Mayet, Thoth, the Lord of Magic, healed the Eye, returning it to wholeness and restoring balance to the world. The perfection of the Eye is shown in the Sun that rises and sets each day, full, round, and whole. The perfection of the Eye is shown at night in the full Moon that gleams, round and unblemished. Perfect and complete, the Udjat was the ideal offering. In funerary texts, the Eye itself is sometimes shown making offering to the deceased-perfection offering perfection, Divinity offering Divine substance.
Another myth explains the Udjat's close association with food offerings. It was said that when Horus brought His Eye to the dead Osiris, the God devoured it as an offering meal. By consuming the wholesome Eye, Osiris was restored to life, becoming the God Whose death ever guarantees continued regeneration and life on Earth; thus, the Eye of Horus was an offering that both restored order and promoted life. When offered to Deities or the dead, the Eye of Horus was intended to serve in the same restorative manner as it had when Osiris ate it. In fact, a list of offerings at Abydos identifies the Eye of Horus with thirty different food items. The offerent asks the Deity to "take to yourself the Eye of Horus," then makes a holy pun on the name of the food as he offers that food to the Deity.
In addition to food, the Eye was frequently associated with incense and perfume offerings. Many of the funerary texts include formulae in which an incense offering is called the Eye of Horus. The offerent might say something like, "O Isis, I have brought to You the Eye of Horus," while presenting a specific perfume or anointing oil.
The Meret Chests
Beginning in the seventeenth Egyptian dynasty, there is evidence for an offering ritual usually known as "dragging or hauling the meret chests." In depictions of the offering rite, the king stands beside four chests situated on sledges. At each of their four corners, the chests have an ostrich plume-a symbol of Mayet (see "Mayet Feather"). In addition, they are usually shown bound with cloth bands, and they were said to contain cloth in four colors: white, green, red, and blue. Some texts explain that the cloth inside is for wrapping the body of Osiris. The king stands holding a scepter or club in his hand as if he were about to strike a blow. A scholar who studied this rite concluded that the meret chest, the ta-meret, was symbolically linked to ta-meri, the Beloved Land; that is, Egypt. The four colors of the linen, as well as the fourfold symbolism-such as the number of chests and the four ostrich plumes-relate to the four cardinal points. Therefore, they are associated with the totality of the land of Egypt itself. The cloth bands that are meant to wrap the body of Osiris refer to the king's duty, as Horus the son of Osiris, to both bind together the Two Lands of Egypt, as well as to bind together the limbs of his dead father, Osiris. As the incarnation of the God Horus, the king is duty bound to reunite his father's limbs and to unite the land of Egypt under his rule. The king's threatening posture is protective; he is warning off anything or anyone that would prevent Egypt-and thus, Osiris-from being united and whole.
Mayet
Mayet (Ma'at) is perhaps the most abstract of the offerings presented to the Deities. Mayet is that which is Right, Eternally True, Just, and Perfect. Mayet is the Divine Order of the Universe, the opposite of Chaos. She is personified as a Goddess. When the king offered Mayet to the Goddesses and Gods, he acknowledged his duty to uphold justice and truth; he committed himself before the Divine to being a good ruler and to the preservation of the universal order. For just as Mayet is bestowed upon the world by the Deities, so the king is responsible for returning Mayet to the Deities in that reciprocal flow between human and Divine upon which existence depends. By performing the Offering of Mayet, the king also acknowledged his own close relationship with the Goddess. She is the Daughter of Re, the Sun God, just as the king is His son. The king is the loving brother of Mayet, and She his beloved sister.
Offering Mayet was done in precisely the same manner as all other types of offering. To represent Mayet, the king extended a small statue of the Goddess toward the temple Deity. The performance of the offering ritual was not only a promise to uphold Mayet, but also an act of Mayet itself, for it was considered right and good that the king should regularly perform this particular offering.
Like the Udjat, Mayet was a supreme offering that could encompass all others. By its own inherent perfection, Mayet is the perfect offering. Mayet was called the Food of the Gods, and the Egyptians said that their Deities "live on" Mayet; They live on Truth and Rightness. The Goddesses and Gods of Egypt eat and drink Mayet. Their dwellings are furnished with Mayet. Their clothing is woven of Mayet. The air They breathe is Mayet.
Yet, the abstraction of Mayet could also be represented by physical offerings. In addition to small images of Mayet, offered wine jars were labeled as the "presentation of Mayet" in some cases. By offering Mayet back to the Deities, the priesthood strengthened the underlying Divine fabric of the universe and nourished the Deities at least as much as by the offering of food and drink.
In later periods, the king is sometimes shown offering his own name to the Goddess or God-especially when his name contained the word Mayet. On several occasions Ramesses II is shown offering his name, Weser Mayet Re, to the Deities. This may be seen as an offering promising to ensure that the meaning of the entire phrase represented by the name-Re's Mayet is Powerful-is maintained. It may also be seen as an offering of the self to the Divine, since the name is an essential part of the person.
The Essence of the Offering
The Offering of Mayet may give us some insight into the ideas behind ancient Egyptian offering rituals. When the king offered Mayet, he promised action-good and just rule-by presenting the Deity with a symbol to represent that action. This is a type of offering that most modern devotees can understand much more readily than the offering of elaborate feasts that the Deities just never seem to eat. We can see how we, too, might offer physical symbols of the vows we make before our Goddesses and Gods. We can understand the value of symbolizing a nonphysical promise with a physical object, grounding that promise in the material and providing an ever-present reminder of our promise each time we catch a glimpse of the offering upon the altar.
Yet, the ancient Egyptians were no more blind than we are today. They, too, clearly saw that the Deities never physically touched the food placed before Them. They even put that fact to good use through the reversion of offerings. But they also knew that there is more to an offering-in fact, more to everything-than its mere physicality. There is also its nonphysical reality, its heka or magic, its essence, its Truth or Mayet-ness, its ka or vital energy. They knew that every offering and every thing has both outer, physical aspects and inner, spiritual aspects, aspects that include the symbolic, the mythical, and the magical. While the Deities certainly operate in the physical realms, They are even more deeply connected to the spiritual realms; therefore, the spiritual aspects of an offering are at least as important as the physical. This may explain why the Egyptians believed the offerent's character to be so important. The offerent added her or his spiritual energy to the symbolic value and spiritual energy of the offering itself. The offerent's nonphysical attributes became part of the offering.
Offering and Heka
Everything in the Egyptian world was brilliantly and beautifully alive with Divinity. Rock, animal, plant, image, or word, no one thing could be considered more alive or "real" than anything else. In the beginning, the Goddesses and Gods had brought all things equally into being from the spiritual realms and manifested them in the physical. In Temple of the Cosmos, Jeremy Nadler opines that, by perceiving things in this way, the world became transparent, and the Egyptians could see through the seeming fixity of worldly things to the symbolic truths attached to those things. What we see manifest in the physical is merely the outer expression of a thing's true spiritual essence. In this view, the difference between an actual basket of figs, a painting of a basket of figs, or the words "basket of figs" is insignificant. They all share the same spiritual essence and symbolic truth, and are, at core, the same.
The link that allows this transparency and communication between the realms is heka. Like Mayet, Heka is personified as a Deity. In fact, the Egyptians sometimes represented Heka and Mayet as Divine Twins working together to sustain and eternally renew the Sun God. Heka was the first-made thing of the Creator, Re-Atum. Heka is the primordial power by which all things, both spiritual and material, are brought into being. He is a central Divine power that underlies all other powers. He is the one type of energy that all the realms share. He is the thread that is woven through all things. He is the ladder that one can use to ascend or descend to the spiritual realms. While the Egyptians acknowledged that the Goddesses and Gods have the greatest share of magic, magic is part of the essential makeup of all things, including human beings. Because heka is in all things and all realms, it can be activated in any realm, spiritual or physical. It is the communicating current that flows between the two. Heka moves between the worlds.
Offering and Words of Power
The word was a key way the Egyptians sought to move magic, and so to access the spiritual realities behind the material-as well as to bring those spiritual realities into physical manifestation. To the ancient Egyptian, words were sacred. They were not a mere collection of meaningless sounds that human beings assign to ideas for convenience. Instead, words expressed the magic and truth of the thing to which they were attached. Words originated in the spiritual realms at the time of first creation and are able to bring the power of original creation into manifestation in the physical and the now. Words express truth and activate magic. Even the letters and sounds that form words are sacred and magical.
The idea that spiritual power is inherent in the Egyptian language remained a constant in Egyptian consciousness. As late as the second or third centuries CE, Egyptians knew their own language to be the true sacred language. A Hermetic treatise from roughly that period expressed the Egyptian opinion that the quality of the speech and the sound of the Egyptian words have in them "the energy of the objects they speak of," and that Egyptian speech is "full of action." In another Hermetic text, the Asclepius, the Divine teacher, Hermes Trismegistos, tells His students that a word is "the sound of spirit striking the air." (See hermeticfellowship.org for more on the Hermetica and Hermeticism.)
Because the sounds and letters of Egyptian words are full of primordial magic and link to eternal spiritual concepts, words that share letters and sounds are related to each other. Not only are they related, but the correspondences between such words can also reveal important concepts about the Divine. Egyptologists have noticed the Egyptian tendency to link words in this way. They often call it wordplay, but it wasn't play. It was word study-an effort to learn the secrets of creation. For instance, because the name of the God of Air, Shu, sounds like ishesh-to sneeze out-and the name of Tefnut, Goddess of Moisture, shares consonants with tef-to spit-a mystery is revealed: when Atum created the Divine Couple, the parents of the Goddesses and Gods, He sneezed out Shu and spit out Tefnut.
No doubt based on this or a similar premise, we find Egyptian magicians using spittle and other bodily fluids as one of the ways to move magic. While this free association of words is not very scientific, it is quite poetic, and it accounts for some of the alien beauty to be found in the ancient Egyptian writings. I have already mentioned an example of this sacred wordplay in relation to offering-when the offerent makes a holy pun on the name of the food as she offers it to the Deity. By doing so, she reveals the deeper symbolism, greater richness, and inner truth of the offering she gives.
Yet, if mere Egyptian words were powerful, Egyptian names were even more so. Eternal and unchanging, the name is an expression of the deepest core of a being. It both originates and eternally exists in the primordial time. To know the name of a thing is to know the thing itself-and to be able to influence it. In a myth that has been called the quintessential example of Egyptian name magic, the Goddess Isis learns the true name of the Sun God. By learning Re's true name, the Goddess gains access to the God's essential Self, His original, First Creation self. Through the God's true name, Isis gains power equal to Re's own. What's more, the myth tells us, the Goddess uses the God's true name to heal and renew Him.
A similar idea underlies the Egyptian proverb that says as long as a person's name is spoken, he or she lives. This is why people made sure their names were recorded on their tombs, and sometimes tomb texts specifically asked visitors to speak aloud the name of the deceased.
Names and epithets could also signify the particular manifestation of a thing or the realization of a quality. When a Deity had many names, it meant that the Deity had a great range of Divine powers; She or He was a Great Goddess or Great God. Of course, Isis is among the most famous of the many-named Deities. An Egyptian text calls Her "Isis in All Names." As Her cult spread to the Greek world, She became known as Myrionomos, She of the Myriad Names, or more loosely translated, the Goddess of Ten Thousand Names.
Invocation Offerings
Words could establish existence, they could move magic-and they could nourish and renew the spirit. Because of their power, many of the most important words were preserved in Egypt's great temple complexes in structures known as the Per Ankh, the House of Life. Primarily, the House of Life was a library containing information about all the things that sustained life and nourished the soul and spirit-from magic to medicine to religious mysteries. The sacred words contained in the Houses of Life were sometimes understood as the food of the deceased, as well as of the Deities, and particularly of Osiris as the Divine prototype of all the dead. One of the funerary books instructs the deceased that his spiritual "hw-food" is to be found in the library, and that his provisions "come into being" in the House of Life. A papyrus known as the Papyrus salt says that the books in the House of Life at Abydos are "the emanations of Re" that keep Osiris alive. An official who claimed to have restored the House of Life at Abydos said that he "renewed the sustenance of Osiris."
Because of the nourishing and sustaining power of the word, tomb inscriptions not only asked visitors to speak the name of the deceased, but might also ask them to recite an offering formula, so that the offerings would be "renewed." Egyptologists know this as the "appeal to the living." The deceased assures the living that he or she need only speak the formula with the "breath of the mouth," and that doing so benefits the one who does it even more than the one who receives it. By speaking the words and naming the offerings, the spiritual essence and magic of those offerings was reactivated and reconnected with its nonphysical source, so that it could once again feed the spirit of the deceased. It was as if the tomb visitor had given the offerings anew. Since both the human giver and the spirit receiver gained during this process, the act of making offering in this way reinforced and promoted the reciprocal blessings between the material and spiritual worlds.
This type of offering-where no material object was given, but magically potent words were spoken-was known as peret kheru, the "going forth of the voice." Egyptologists refer to it as an invocation offering. Because of the essential spiritual unity of an object, its representation, and the words that describe and name it, the Egyptians considered invocation offerings to be fully as effective and fully as valuable as physical offerings. Invocation offering is a genuine, traditional Egyptian form of offering, and it is a key type of offering that we will use in this book to help create and develop a relationship with Isis.
Offering and the Sacred Image
Modern devotees can borrow another Egyptian technique for focusing our offering rites-the use of sacred images. Since the Egyptians considered words and images to be as true and real as the thing itself, they were perfectly comfortable making offering to their Goddesses and Gods through sacred images of Them. On a spiritual level, the image of the Goddess or God was of precisely the same essence as the Deity Her- or Himself. On a physical level, the image was literally filled with the Divine presence and very much alive.
In the same way that we consider a person and her body to be joined, and don't always distinguish the person from the body-at least while the person lives-so the Egyptian Deity was considered to be united with Her or His body, the sacred image. Yet, this was not an exclusive arrangement. There was no One True Image of Isis or any of the Deities. The Goddesses and Gods were known to inhabit and be alive in many bodies in many temples. We have an indication of just how alive the Egyptians considered the images to be from the fact that a sculptor was called "he who gives life," and his work was described as "giving birth." In Memphis, where Ptah was honored as the Creator, it was said that the God Himself decreed that the "bodies of the Gods," that is, the sacred images in the temples, should be made "according to the wishes of their [the Deities'] hearts" so that They would happily enter into wood, stone, clay, or other sculptural materials.
From this, we can see that while all things are infused with Divinity and are thus able to mediate Divine presence, certain forms and materials were considered especially pleasing to a particular Deity. By sculpting Their images in the traditional forms that corresponded to the spiritual reality of that particular Deity, and by using the materials sacred and pleasing to Her or Him, the sculptor could give birth to a form that was truly made according to the wishes of the Deity's heart. The result would be a body-or bodies-into which the Deity would gladly enter.
In the Hermetic treatise Asceplius, dating somewhere between the second century BCE and the fourth CE, Hermes Trismegistos explains that just as the Creator made humankind, so humankind makes the temple Gods-the sacred temple images. He says that the nature of the images is in part earthly, for they are made of plants, stones, and spices "that have a natural Divine power." But they are also, in part, Divine, for the statues are ensouled, conscious, and filled with spirit. Hermes explains that humans are able to invoke Divine powers into the images "through holy and divine mysteries."
It is likely that the holy and Divine mysteries used to enliven the images consisted mainly of an important ceremony known as the Opening of the Mouth. The Opening of the Mouth is one of the key rituals of sacred magic. We find traces of it in many of the surviving Egyptian rites. For example, the daily offering rites performed in the temples included elements also found in the Opening of the Mouth. The ceremony was performed for all the sacred images of the Deities honored in the temples-even the wall carvings. Sometimes it was performed for an entire temple. It was also worked for statues of the king and other royals and nobles who might have images in the temples. Later, it was performed on the mummy of the deceased and on the mummies of sacred animals, as well as on important amulets-such as the heart amulet or healing talismans. In every case, the purpose was to awaken, enliven, and ensoul the image on which it is performed. The Opening of the Mouth is nothing short of an act of creation; it is the bestowing or restoring of life.
The ritual changed over time and from place to place. Following is a very generalized description of what took place: The image was placed on a mound of pure sand to represent the primordial perfection of the First Time. The priests censed the image, sprinkled it with water, and purified its mouth with natron, a natural salt. The foreleg of a bull calf was presented (because of the shape of the leg, some scholars believe it may have been a reference to the constellation Ursa Major). To open the mouth of the image, the priest touched its mouth with a ritual adze, an ax-like tool that, in its nonritual form, was used to dress wood. Next, the eyes and ears were awakened in the same way. Various offerings were given throughout this process. Finally, the mouth was smeared with milk (sometimes from milk jugs-one full, one empty-identified, interestingly, as the "breasts of Isis and Horus") as if the image were a newborn child drinking its mother's milk. Newly born, the image was dressed and feasted as in the daily offering rites; during the New Kingdom, this even included the detail of wiping away the footprints of the priests. Surely then, the daily rites were meant to reinforce and re-energize the original sacred magic of the Opening of the Mouth. (For an elementally based Opening of the Mouth rite that you can perform on any sacred image of Isis, see Isis Magic, "Enlivening the Sacred Image.")
A properly awakened sacred image could sanctify the whole temple. In a text from an Amun temple built by Ramesses, the king asks Amun to bless the temple because he has placed the God's image in it "so that it [the temple] may be divine."
Once the Opening of the Mouth ceremony had enlivened it, the image could be addressed as the Deity. It became a focus through which life-sustaining and renewing offerings and service to the Divine could be given. It became a channel through which human beings could invoke and perceive the Divine. In the Asclepius, Hermes teaches that these temple Deities are the ones Who are most willing to be close to human beings and to help them. For, like human beings, these Deities are part matter and part spirit. Because of this affinity, the spark of Divinity that indwells the sacred image consents to be near us, helping humankind in a pure spirit of Divine love. Hermes also notes that it was by serving the temple Deities-the sacred images-that human beings first learned piety.
The ancient Egyptians were by no means alone in this attitude toward their sacred images. Two examples, one ancient and one modern, will suffice to show that human beings have often revered the Divine through sacred images and found their Deities very much alive and quite real in those images.
Greek Guardian Statues
When we think of ancient Greek sculpture, we usually think of the skillful marble representations of Goddesses, Gods, heroes, and heroines by great sculptors such as Pheidias. Yet those images were, for the most part, not the most sacred cult images. Instead, they were much-admired votive gifts thought to delight the Deities with their astonishing beauty. The true cult images were normally quite different-much older, rougher, and smaller. The image of the Deity might be just a piece of wood, either rough-shaped by Nature or carved as xoana, which simply means wooden carvings. On the island of Ikaros, a special piece of wood was regarded as Artemis. The cult image might also be a vaguely human-shaped meteor that fell from Heaven, or it could be a clay or bronze image small enough to fit in a portable chest, or to be kept in the home of the priestess or priest.
These ancient images were cared for in ways similar to the Egyptian images. They were washed and dressed, sacrificed to, and prayed before. Philosophers warned against confusing the image with the Deity-which surely means that is exactly what many people were doing. Often the term theos (god) is used in Greek texts to mean the statue of a Deity, not the Deity represented by the statue. So, like the Egyptians, the Greeks did not always distinguish between the Deity and the image; however, we have no evidence that the Greeks had an equivalent to the Opening of the Mouth ceremony meant to instill the cult images with life. This doesn't mean they didn't have such a rite; it may have been one of the well-kept mystery secrets. Still, to date we have no specific evidence. From current indications, it seems that these ancient images were inherently imbued with the qualities of the Deity, already alive with the Divine presence.
Other living images in Greece were specifically ensouled. These were the guardian statues-living images of fierce animals, gorgons or other daimons, or even Goddesses and Gods. Homer includes a mention of gold and silver guardian dogs that Odysseus saw as he entered the palace of a Phaeacian king. He says the dogs were "immortal and unaging" and were the work of the great Smith God, Hephaestos. Hephaestos was supposed to have created a number of these guardians and to have animated them to protect palaces, temples, and even islands. A Hellenistic poet, Nicander, refers to another set of guardian dogs and notes that they were descendants of the dogs which Hephaestos cast in bronze, "set souls in," and presented as a gift to Zeus.
Hephaestos also created Talos, the bronze man (familiar to many readers from the movie Jason and the Argonauts) who guarded the island of Crete. The God also made a bronze lion that guarded the island of Lesbos and a golden dog that guarded the temple of Zeus on Crete. He and Athena made the singing statues at Apollo's temple at Delphi, according to the poet Pindar. Daedalus, too, created animated statues that had to be tied down to prevent them from running off.
A little-known poet, who, like the more famous lyric poet, was also named Alcaeus, tells us that Hephaestos first built an image, then put pharmaka into it. Generally, pharmaka are medicinal, magical, and/or poisonous herbs. The word also came to have a broader meaning that included spellcraft and magic. So, it is likely that what was meant was that Hephaestos used some type of magic, especially involving herbs, to enliven the empsychon (animated or ensouled) images.
Images of the Goddesses and Gods could also be empsychon. There is a story about Medea in which the famous sorceress creates an image of Artemis, hides pharmaka in it, and then uses it as a "Trojan horse" to trick an enemy. Sometimes these types of images depicted the Deities in a negative or fierce aspect, for example, Apollo as a bow-bearing Plague God. The idea was to fight fire with fire. The Plague God Apollo would keep the plague away from any city at whose gate He stood. The most common of these gate-guardian Deities were Apollo, Artemis, and Heracles-the archers Apollo and Artemis as "far-shooters" Who could work at a distance and Heracles as a fierce warrior. In myth and legend, the aliveness of these images is suggested by the fact that they were said to move, to sweat, to weep, or to speak. Impressively, sometimes they glowed or shot fire.
After the worship of Isis expanded from Egypt to Greece, and then to Rome, the Roman poet Ovid tells a tale in which a mother and daughter who pray to Isis in Her temple image see the statue animate, shake its altar, shoot forth rays of light, and rattle its sistrum.
Hindu Murtis
There are striking correspondences between what we know of ancient Egyptian offering worship and both ancient and modern Hindu worship. Among these are the importance of the murti (sacred image), the daily rites it receives, and the ceremony required to enliven the image.
First, a caveat. India is a huge country with a wide variety of Hindu sects-not to mention other religions. My comments will be generalizations that may or may not be true for every sect or group. For example, there are several schools of thought in Hinduism regarding whether the image is the Deity or is a symbol through which one may worship the Deity. Modern Neo-Hinduism, under criticism from Muslims and Christians who accuse them of "idol worship," says that the image is simply a symbol of the Divine and, therefore, what they do cannot be construed as idolatry. However, the more traditional view-that the image, having undergone a ceremony called Pranapratishta, is the Deity-is in complete harmony with the ancient Egyptian view. In the same way that the Higher Self of the human being is sheathed in the physical body, these more traditional Hindu worshippers consider the image of the Deity to be Her or His body. Although the image is not the ultimate form of the Divine spirit, it is quite as real as the existence of our own bodies. Other modern Hindu sources say the image is not the Deity, but is filled with the Deity's energy, so it can serve as a focal point for communication and honoring.
The daily offering and service to the Deity is called puja. Puja is performed in the great temples, as well as by private worshippers in home shrines. Puja should be offered three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. Usually, the morning services are more elaborate, followed by shorter forms for noon and evening-just as in ancient Egypt. Personal household puja may consist of chanted prayers, bathing the sacred image, clothing and ornamenting it, offering perfume and flowers, offering incense and lamps, and offering food. In the great temples, puja includes waking the Deity in the image each morning and putting Her or Him to bed each night. Generally, it is similar to the household puja, but with many more specific ritual acts, more abundant offerings, and more extensive recitation of hymns, chanting of mantras, and reading of sacred texts.
Just as the ritual acts of puja are similar to what we know of the daily offering rites in the Egyptian temples, so, too, is the intent similar. At the beginning of puja, the worshipper speaks the samkalpa formula to state his or her intent. With this formula, the worshipper asks for the fruits of the rite as promised in sacred literature and for a general blessing for him- or herself and family. Just as in Egypt, the worshipper gives the offerings of puja in order to increase the Deity's power-and expects blessings in return. Gift giving and receiving is an important part of Hindu culture. By giving, one also receives. When one receives in the proper spirit, one also gives a great gift. If a Deity grants your prayer, it is only natural that you should give a gift back. Both Hindu temples and communities benefit from gifts and good works pledged to the Goddesses and Gods.
What's more, texts tell us that offerings are given so that life will not stagnate because of a lack of power. In other words, the offering rites of puja, like those of Egypt, are intended to continue the reciprocal flow of energy and blessings from the Divine to the human, the human to the Divine. As in the Egyptian temples, the food offerings, once given to the Deity, are returned to the worshippers to eat and drink with devotion.
Some modern Hindu sources explain that puja keeps us in harmony with cosmic forces, enabling us to cultivate our positive characteristics and dissolve our negative ones. They also stress that daily relationship with the Divine is essential for spiritual growth.
The sacred images that receive puja and through which worshippers can create their daily relationship with the Divine are enlivened with a ceremony called Pranapratishta, or Establishing Breath. Unless it undergoes this ceremony, the image is lifeless and should receive neither worship nor puja. Damaged images can no longer receive worship or puja and a ceremony to remove the breath, the prana, from such a damaged image must be performed and the image destroyed. Pranapratishta is also used to instill life in a yantra, a sacred, talismanic geometric form. The rite imbues the yantra, like the Divine image, with a full set of senses and a subtle body. Pranapratishta is also sometimes used as an initiation ceremony for human beings. It would not surprise me in the least if we someday find that the Opening of the Mouth ceremony was used in this way in ancient Egypt.
There is even a Hindu equivalent to Egyptian invocation offering:mental puja. Generally, mental puja is reserved for a very advanced practitioner, one who has spent many years training his or her visualization skills, or for a person so poor that he or she simply has no physical goods to offer. In mental puja, one does everything as in normal puja, but does it by visualizing each step of the rite and each offering. (Naturally, more elaborate gifts may be offered in this way.) In some forms of Tantric worship, mental worship is part of physical puja. The image of the Deity is visualized as present in the worshipper's heart; then the image is enflamed in vision in the heart, which continues to burn with spiritual fire throughout the time that the worshipper is performing the outer or physical puja.
Offering and the Ka
In what way did the ancient Egyptians envision that these temple Deities-these ensouled, conscious, and spirit-filled images-could actually receive the offerings humans gave them? If the images were alive, surely the Deities could receive Their offerings.
They could, indeed. The ka, or vital, life energy, was the main spiritual mechanism for the transfer of an offering from offerent to Deity. All living beings-Deities, humans, animals, plants, stars, mountains, temples-have a ka. The kas of the Goddesses and Gods are extremely powerful. In one Egyptian creation myth, the Creator Atum embraces His children, the God Shu and the Goddess Tefnut, with His ka in order to protect Them from the primordial chaos of the Nun into which They were born. The ka is a subtle body that exists before a being comes to birth, is joined to that being at birth, lives with her or him throughout life, and then travels to the Otherworld after death. Also known as the Double, the ka is so closely aligned with the living being that it takes on the being's physical shape. You may be familiar with the phenomenon of the "phantom limb" in which an amputee will claim to be able to feel his missing limb. Ancient Egyptians might say that he perceived his ka. Whenever we are particularly struck by the sheer, forceful vitality of a person, we, too, may perceive her or his ka. Those who can see "auras" could be said to be seeing the ka.
The ka "doubles" the person physically, yet the ka is not essentially personal. It is held in common with all living things-including the Deities. The ka was the ancient Egyptian's connection to a vast pool of vitality greater than the person her- or himself. During life, the ka is in the body with the ba, the soul. At death, the ka flows back to the spiritual realms. The ba must then follow it in order to be reunited with it. Once the ba and ka are rejoined, the person becomes an akh, a Shining One; that is, a being made divine. Thus, the tomb became known as the Place of the Ka, and to die was to "go to one's ka."
Because the ka energy resides in both physical and spiritual realms at once, it was considered to have great wisdom that it could share with the human being. In later periods, it functioned as a Higher Self or guardian angel that could advise the human being. By the time of the New Kingdom, people were actively seeking to develop a relationship with their own kas. Making offering to one's ka became a widespread practice, and prayers to the ka are included in the funerary texts. Just as Atum embraced Shu and Tefnut with His ka, so the individual hoped to be embraced by her or his own ka.
found on the Dailyom archives i believe.