SHAMBHALA

4

 

MYTHS TO LIVE BY

HOW WE RE-CREATE ANCIENT LEGENDS IN OUR DAILY LIVES TO RELEASE HUMAN POTENTIAL

Joseph Campbell 1972

Page 38

THE EMERGENCE OF MANKIND

"Let me here review a legend of 'the North Anierican Blackfoot tribe that I have already recounted in The Masks of God, Volume I, Primitive Mythology; for it suggests better than any other legend I know the manner in which the artist-hunters of the paleolithic age must have interpreted the rituals of their mysteriously pairited temple caves. This Blackfoot legend is of a season when the Indians found themselves, on the approach of winter, unable to lay up a supply of buffalo meat, since the animals were refusing to be stampeded over the buffalo fall. When driven toward the precipice, they would swerve at the edge to right or left and gallop away.
Ang so it was that, early one morning, when a young woman of the hungering village encamped at the foot of the great cliff went to fetch water for her family's tent and, looking up, spied a herd grazing on the plain above, at the edge of the precipice, she cried out that if they would only jump into the corral, she would marry one of them. Whereupon, lo! the animals began coming over, tum­bling and falling to their deaths. She was, of course, amazed and thrilled, but then, when a big bull with a single bound cleared the walls of the corral and came trotting in her direction, she was terrified. "Come along!" he said. "Oh no!" she answered, drawing back. But insisting on her promise, he led her up the cliff, onto the prairie, and away.
That bull had been the moving spirit of the herd, a figure rather of mythic than of material dimension. And we. find his counter­parts everywhere in the legends of primitive hunters: semi-human, semi-animal, shamanistic characters (like the serpent of Ederi), / Page 39 / difficult to picture either as animal or as man; yet in the narratives we accept their parts with ease.
When the happy people of the village had finished slaughtering their windfall, they realized that the young woman had disap­peared. Her father, discovering her tracks and noticing beside them those of the buffalo, turned back for his bow and quiver, and then followed the trail on up the cliff and out onto the plain. It was a considerable way that he had walked before he came to a buffalo wallow and, a little way off, spied a herd. Being tired, he sat down and, while considering what to do, saw a magpie flying, which descended to the wallow close by and began picking about.
"Ha!" cried the man. "You handsome bird! As you fly around, should you see my daughter, would you tell her, please, that her father is here, waiting for her at the wallow?"
The beautiful black and white bird with long graceful tail winged away directly to the herd and, seeing a young woman there, fluttered to earth nearby and retumed his picking, turning his head this way and that, until, coming very close to her, he whispered, "Your father is waiting for you at the wallow."
She was frightened and glanced about. The bull, her husband, close by, was asleep. "Sh-h-h! Go back," she whispered, "and tell my father to wait."
The bird returned with her message to the wallow, and the big bull presently woke.
"Go get me some water," the big bull said, and the young woman, rising, plucked a horn from her husband's head and proceeded to the wallow, where her father roughly seized her arm. "No, no!" she warned. "They will follow and kill us. both. We must wait until he returns to sleep, when I'll come and we'll slip away."
She filled the horn and walked back with it to her husband, who drank but one swallow and sniffed. "There is a person close by," said he. He sipped and sniffed again; then stood up and bellowed. What a fearful sound!

Page 40
Up stood all the bulls. They raised their short tails and shook them, tossed their great heads, and bellowed back; then pawed the dirt, rushed about in all directions, and finally, heading for the wallow, trampled to death that poor Indian who had come to seek his daughter: hooked him with their horns and again trampled him with their hoofs, until not even the smallest particle of his body remained to be seen. The daughter was screaming, "Oh, my father, my father!" And her face was streaming with tears.
"Aha!" said the bull harshly. "So you're mourning for your father! And so now, perhaps, you will understand how it is and has always been with us. We have seen our mothers, fathers, all our relatives, killed and butchered by your people. But I shall have pity on you and give you just one chance. If you can bring your father back to life, you and he can return to your people."
The unhappy girl, turning to the magpie, begged him to search the trampled mud for some little portion of her father's body; which he did, again pecking about in the wallow until his long beak came up with a joint of the man's backbone. The young woman placed this on the ground carefully and, covering it with her robe, sang a certain song. Not long, and it could be seen that there was a man beneath the robe. She lifted a corner. It was her father, not yet alive. She let the corner down, resumed her song, and when she next took the robe away he was breathing. Her father stood up, and the magpie, delighted, flew round and round with a marvelous clatter. The buffalo were astounded.
"We have seen strange things today," said the big bull to the others of his herd. "The man we trampled to death is again alive. The people's power is strong."
He turned to the young woman. "Now, before you and your father go, we shall teach you our own dance and song, which you are never to forget." For these were to be the magical means by which the buffalo killed by the people in the future would be restored to life, as the man killed by the buffalo had been restored.
All the buffalo danced; and, as befitted the dance of such great beasts, the song was slow and solemn, the step ponderous and de / Page 41 / liberate. And when the dance was ended, the big bull said, "Now go to your home and do not forget what you have seen. Teach this dance and song to your people. The sacred object of the rite is to be a bull's head and buffalo robe: all who dance the bulls are to wear a bull's head and buffalo robe when they perform." 2
It is amazing how many of the painted figures of the great pa­leolithic caves take on new life when viewed in the light of such tales of the recent hunting races. One cannot be certain, of course, that the references suggested are altogether correct. However, that the main ideas were much the same is almost certainly true. And among these we may number that of the animals killed as being willing victims, that of the ceremonies of their invocation as representing a mystic covenant between the animal world and the human, and that of song and dance as being the vehicles of the magical force of such ceremonies; further, the concept of each species of the animal world as a kind of multiplied individual, having as its seed or essential monad a semi-human, semi-animal, magically potent Master Animal; and the idea related to this, of there being no such thing as death, material bodies being merely costumes put on by otherwise invisible monadic entities, which can pass back and forth from an invisible other world into this, as though through an intangible wall; the notions, also, of marriages between human beings and beasts, of commerce and conversations between beasts and men in ancient times, and of specific covenanting episodes in those times from which the rites and customs of the peoples were derived; the notion of the magical power of such rites, and the idea that, to retain their power, they must be held true to their first and founding form-even the slightest deviation destroying their spell.

 

 

SHAMANIC WISDOM IN THE PYRAMID TEXTS

THE MYSTICAL TRADITIONS OF ANCIENT EGYPT

Jeremy Naydler

THE SHAMANIC ROOTS OF THE PYRAMID TEXTS

The Antechamber Texts

Page 272

"2) UTTERANCE 303: THE DAWNING OF THE SECOND HORUS

"In utterance 303, Unas appeals to the gods of the four directions that reed floats be set down for him so that he may cross over toward the Cool Region. The utterance is reminiscent of utterance 263, on the south wall, where the reed floats of the sky are set in place for the king, just as they are for Ra and Harakhti, so that he may cross over to the eastern part of heaven. But here the prototype is neither Ra nor Harakhti but Osiris, and the gods of the four directions are not quite so amenable. They subject Unas to an interrogation:

Are you Horus, son of Osiris?
Are you the god, the eldest one, the son of Hathor? Are you the seed of Geb?90

Unas replies that he has appeared (khai, literally, "dawned") as a second Horns, and this has been recorded in the spirit world. Once again, then, we find the king referring to himself as a Horns, the implication being that his inner identity has metamorphosed to a stage beyond that of Osiris, for he has been reborn through the celestial cow goddess, Hathor.91 As we have seen in utterance 271, on the south wall, the rebirth of the king through the cow goddess is not only an important theme of the Pyramid Texts, but it was also an event celebrated during the Sed festival.

(3) UTTERANCE 304: THE OPENINGS OF THE SKY

Utterance 304 begins with Unas asking the daughter of the jackal god, Anubis, who stands by the "openings" or "windows" of the sky, to let him through. The daughter of Anubis was a serpent goddess called Kebehut, and her gatekeeper role is presumably similar to that of Anubis, who, as well as causing the king to ascend to the sky, also often has the role of gatekeeper.92 In the text, the word for "opening" or "window" is peter, which as a verb means "to see," implying some kind of aperture in the sky that opens onto the spirit realm. Shamanic accounts of passing through such apertures relate that they open for just an instant, and only the initiate is able to go through them into the Otherworld.93 The meeting with the daughter of Anubis is followed by a meeting with an ostrich (possibly symbolizing Maat) on the banks of the "Winding Waterway and the Bull of Ra. In this latter meeting, the gods of the four directions become cotnpacted into one image of the Bull of Ra, who has four horns, one for each of the four directions. Interestingly, it is the western horn that Unas requests the bull to lower so that he may pass. The bull asks: "Are 'you a pure Westerner?" "I have come / Page 273 / from Falcon City," replies the king, thereby declaring his royal credentials. Falcon City should probably be understood as the royal residence on earth, once again implying that the king is traveling alive rather than dead.94In this utterance, we note also that the king is traveling to the west, rather than to the east. The utterance ends with Unas addressing the Field of Offerings and greeting the "honorable ones" (the dead) who are in it.95

(4) UTTERANCE 305: THE SKY LADDER
In utterance 305, Unas, now at the top of the celestial ladder, is subjected to a third interrogation. This ladder was mentioned in passing in the pre­vious utterance. Now it figures more prominently as Unas's mode of ascent. The image of the sky ladder or stairway is, along with transfor­mation into a bird, one of the most pervasive symbols of the means of
ascent from the world we normally inhabit with our ordinary conscious­ness to the spirit world, accessible only to visionary consciousness. The symbolism is primal, and it emerges in such varied accounts as the dream­vision of J acob in the Book of Genesis, the mystical ladders of both the Orphic and Mithraic mysteries, and later Christian depictions of the "ladder of virtues" that must be scaled by the soul in its ascent to heaven.96 The root of this ladder symbolism is shamanic: In shamanic traditions worldwide, ascent to the spirit world by means of a ladder is commonly reported and indeed ritually enacted.97 In utterance 305, the sky ladder is thought of as being made of rope, knotted together by Ra and Horus for Osiris. Apart from the possible allusion
here to the theme of reassembling the vehicle of Osiris (as in the later versions of the ferryboat utterance 270) by having to knot it together, the Osirian symbolism can also be seen in the fact that the djed pillar is sometimes represented with crossbars to give it the appearance of a ladder (fig. 8.30).

Figure 8.30 (omitted). The ladder as a djed pillar with crossbars. Vignette to BD 155, Papyrus of Ani. Nineteenth Dynasty.

The mysticical ascent of Osiris-Unas to his illuminated state as an akh, which he reaches at the top of the ladder, is witnessed by Horns and Seth, whose integration, as we have already noted in utterances 215 and 221, is necessary if the inner transfiguration from ba to akh is to take place. In the second part of the present utterance, we find a metaphysical / Page 274 / statement that foreshadows both the mystical philosophy of Plato and that of the Hermetic tradition:

The spirit (akh) belongs to the sky, the body (khat) to the earth.98

This statement sums up the cosmic perspective of the Pyramid Texts, which is that the human spirit is celestial in origin and in essence, and thus human beings realize their true nature in a cosmic rather than an earthly ambience.

(5) UTTERANCE 306: THE LINKING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

In utterance 306, however, we find an apparently contradictory teaching in which both heaven and ea:rth are "given" to Unas. As in utterance 256, on the west wall of the antechamber, it is Atum who gives Unas heaven and Geb who gives him the earth.99 This event occurs in the semimystical, semiritual context of Unas meeting the divinized ancestral spirits of Pe (ancient capital of the north) and Nekhen (ancient capital of the south). These royal ancestors had an important role in the Sed festival, and respectively represented not only Lower and Upper Egypt but also heaven and earth

.They come to you, the 'divine souls of Pe, they come to you, the divine souls of Nekhen, the gods who are in heaven,
the gods who are on earth.
They make supports for you with their arms, and you ascend to the sky,
climbing up on it in its name of "Ladder." The sky is given to you, the earth is given to you," says Atum.
He who spoke about it is Geb.l00

What is being described is a linking of heaven and earth. The function of the ladder here is not simply to provide a means of ascent away from the earth; it is also to bring about a connection between earth and heaven. It is possible that, just as with utterances 255 and 256, on the west wall, which in many respects resemble the present utterance, what we are dealing with here is an aspect of the coronation ritual. Geb declares that not only do the realms of Horus and Seth that lie within his (i.e., Geb's) kingdom worship / Page 274 / Unas, but so also does the heavenly Field of Rushes, thereby once more emphasizing the union of the earthly and the heavenly within Unas.
A powerful symbol of this union of the earthly (or physical) and heavenly (or spiritrial) realms is the bull, which was written with the same hieroglyph as the ka. For the Egyptians, the vital and generative energy of the ka was felt to derive from the spirit world. The ka energy was held by the ances­tors. In this utterance, it seems that the metamorphosis of Unas into a bull is a direct result of his meeting the royal ancestors of Pe ~nd Nekhen. The climax of the utterance comes with a description of Unas in his new state:

Behold, you have become the enduring butt of the wild butts. . . .
Endure, endure, O enduring bull,
that you may be enduring at their head,
at the head of the spirits (akhu) forever.101

It was as much to symbolize the king's integration of the ancestral ka ener­gies as to indicate his generative power and renewed vitality that a bull's tail hung from the kilt that the king wore for the dedication of the field during the Sed festival. Whether or not this utterance is connected with the Sed festival, it seems far more likely that it is part of a kingship ritual than a funerary rite.102

(6) UTTERANCE 307: THE BULL OF HELIOPOLIS

In utterance 307, the theme of the king's identity as a bull continues, but now it is made explicit that the energy of the bull is solar (see fig. 8.31). The bull-king Unas knows himself to be one with Ra, the god whose cult cen­ter is Heliopolis. At Heliopolis, the solar bull 'was known as the Mnevis (menwer) bull, and his cult was long established there.103 In the Sed festival of Osorkon II, the Mnevis bull appears along with the sacred pillar of Heliopolis (see fig. 8.32). In fact, the head of the Mnevis bull alone is shown, attached to the Heliopolitan pillar (Heliopolis is Greek for the Egyptian Iunu, literally the "pillar" city). It is probably with this Mnevis bull that Unas is identified when we read that he is "the great-faced bull which came out of Heliopolis."104 At the very beginning of the utterance, Unas says:

A Heliopolitan is in me, O god,
a Heliopolitan such as you are is in me, O god.
A Heliopolitan is in me, O Ra,
a Heliopolitan such as you are is in me, O Ra.105

Insofar as Unas experiences this inner identification with Ra, he experi­ences the bull energy within himself so strongly that he can say to Ra:

I come to you.
I am the wild bull of the grassland, the bull with the great head
who comes from Heliopolis.
I come to you,
the wild bull of the grassland. For it is I who generates you, and continuously generates you. 106

Figure 8.31. (omitted) The solar Mnevis (menwer) bull, whose cult center was at Heliopolis (Iunu), is here depicted on an Eighteenth Dynasty stela.

The divine-human king experiences his divinity through unlocking the solar bull energy within himself, so that it is experienced as freely accessi­ble to him. In this mystical experience, the king locates himself at the generative source of the divine creative power. Thus he can say to Ra: "It is I who generates you."
On the west wall, in utterance 254, we saw Unas described as "a bull of heaven" and subsequently in utterance 2 5 6 inheriting both earth and heaven. On this north wall, we have the uniting of earth and heaven in the king's person (utt. 306) immedi­ately followed by his being hailed as a bull (utt. 307). The deeper meaning of this image of the king becoming a bull would seem to be that the
bull-king unites within himself both the physical and the spiritual aspects of human nature. The Heliopolitan bull symbolizes the inexhaustible fecundity and creativity of the spiritual source, Ra, that the king experiences within his own being. At the same time, the bull is such a creature of nature, exuding sexual and physical prowess, that to inter­pret the bull-king of utterance 307 as a dead king who has thrown off his physical body and is phys­ically disempowered seems a contradiction in terms. Should we not, rather, say that the utterance is describing the living king who has united within himself the instinctive and the spiritual? Something similar perhaps to what Jung referred to when he wrote: "In the mental make-up of the most spiritual you discern the traits of the living primitive." 107

Figure 8.32. (omitted) The head of the Mnevis (men­wer) bull is attached to a pillar representing Heliopolis. From the Sed festival of Osorkon 11.