Tag Archives: initiate

Early Christian Face Veiling

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I came across some references to early Christian ritual vestments this morning in Matthew Brown’s The Gate of Heaven.  He cited The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation by Edward Yarnold, and The Archæology of [...]

The Degree Ceremonies of Oxford University - Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)
Dr. Hugh Nibley’s opening remarks in his earthshaking address, “Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift,” given at the BYU commencement ceremony on August 19, 1983, would have fit even more perfectly in an Oxford setting. In refering to his statement in a commencement prayer he gave in 1960 in which he [...]

Time and Eternity: An Egyptian Dualism

As I was researching for the posts on the ankh, I came across some information which was interesting, describing the Egyptian concept of “time” and “eternity.” These concepts almost seem repetitive and redundant to our modern way of thinking, but to the Egyptians each of these terms represented something concrete and distinct, and both were [...]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” - Part 3

(Continued from Part 2)
The ankh symbol appears frequently with several other hieroglyphics in certain formulas and invocations that immediately call our attention.  These are wedja, seneb, djed, & was.
This table summarizes the different possible explanations for these hieroglyphics that I have been able to find: 

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” - Part 2

(Continued from Part 1, which has been updated)
As I mentioned in Part 1, the more interesting aspects of the Egyptian ankh are not necessarily what it means standing alone, but how the Egyptians used it in their texts and illustrations.
There are three principal ways that the Egyptians used the ankh symbol, by itself, in their [...]

U.K. Coronation Ceremony as an Endowment

The sacred ceremonies in which new monarchs are crowned kings and queens in the United Kingdom have significant parallels to the LDS Mormon endowment. These traditions stem from ancient times in English history, and have remained relatively unchanged in form throughout ages. The most recent coronation ceremony was on June 2, 1953, when [...]

The Premortal Heavenly Temple

The temples on earth are reflections of the temple in heaven. They mirror each other both in form and content. Consider the following points that I pull from Matthew Brown’s exceptional and classic book on the temple, The Gate of Heaven:

John saw “the temple which is in heaven” (Rev. 14:15, 17; Rev. 15:5-8).
Other [...]