Is the Temple Troubling?
Someone recently asked me the following:
Perhaps you can explain how a person who finds the [temple experience] to be … troubling should express those feelings.
This was my reply, with additional edits: [Read more…]
life
The Founding Fathers’ Temple Work
Since tomorrow is Independence Day, I thought I might say a word about our Founding Fathers. We are deeply indebted to all the noble men and women who sacrificed their lives to establish this country of the United States of America some 232 years ago, and to make this country a free land. Through their efforts this country was set on a sure foundation of certain personal irrevocable rights and freedoms which they believed were given by God himself. The Declaration of Independence solemnly proclaimed:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness)) [Read more…]
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 invoked in certain rituals, texts, and illustrations. It is clear that the Egyptians considered these two ideas as unique, but they often used them together, and so it seems difficult for our present Egyptologists to distinguish or disambiguate what the Egyptians meant by them individually. There has been plenty of speculation.
The two symbols used for the commonly translated “time” and “eternity” are neheh (nhh) and djet (dt), respectively, and looked something like this:
Jan Assmann described the difficulty of pinning down an understanding of these hieroglyphics: [Read more…]
The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 3
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: [Read more…]
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 drawings:
Probably the most common depiction of the ankh is being clutched in the hand by the gods and goddesses on the upper loop portion of the symbol. Wikipedia notes:
The ankh appears frequently in Egyptian tomb paintings and other art, often at the fingertips of a god or goddess in images that represent the deities of the afterlife conferring the gift of life on the dead person’s mummy… ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh))
In other words, the Egyptians believed that their gods “held” eternal life in their hands, and could bestow it upon certain persons at their pleasing. Chevalier and Gheerbrant note: [Read more…]
