Cavalli - Embodying Osiris: the secrets of alchemical integration

Embodying

OSIRIS

Djed Pillar and Osiris.

Embodying

OSIRIS

THE SECRETS OF

ALCHEMICAL

TRANSFORMATION

Thom F. Cavalli, PhD

Learn more about Thom F. Cavalli and his work at www.cavallibooks.com, www.alchemicalpsychology.com, and www.facebook.com/anandvichara

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Copyright 2010 by Thom F. Cavalli, Ph.D.

First Quest Edition 2010

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

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Cover image: Mural painting of Osiris. Burial chamber from 19th dynasty. Copyright DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.

Cover design by Margarita Reyfman.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cavalli, Thom F. (Thom Frank).

Embodying Osiris: the secrets of alchemical transformation / Thom F. Cavalli.1st Quest ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0880-0

1. Osiris (Egyptian deity) 2. AlchemyPsychological aspects. 3. Jungian psychology. I. Title.

BL2450.O7C39 2010

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2071-0

5 4 3 2 1 * 10 11 12 13 14

To my beloved sister and brother, Dyan and Robert

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?... In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.

Carl Gustav Jung

Lifes raison dtre is to become conscious of oneself; then the aim of life is cosmic consciousness, the consciousness of the All, beyond transient and mortal contingencies. To accept and to attempt to fathom this, the teaching of all revealed religions, is worth living for.

R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. Djed Pillar and Osiris

PRONUNCIATION KEY FOR MAJOR EGYPTIAN GODS AND PHARAOHS

GODS

Note: Goddesses names always end in et. Most names, however, have been changed from the original language (Coptic, Greek, Latin, etc.) and therefore do not follow this rule. Isiss name, for example, was originally Aset, Hathor was Het, and Neith was Net.

PHARAOHS

The above pronunciation key is only meant as a guide to enliven the readers experience. We do not know how these names were actually pronouncedthey changed over time and place. Pronunciations are different according to each countrys language. At best, this is how people in the English-speaking world pronounce these names today.

FOREWORD

We are separated from those who came before us not only by time but by sensibility. The ancient Romans are reasonably close; we can gaze at their marble busts and see them almost as people we know. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews are a step further removed, although we can still recognize in them the lineaments of our cultural ancestors. But when we come to Egypt, we hit a wall. The mind of every literate person is populated with images of Egyptpyramids, mummies, bird-headed gods, ladies with eyelids green from ground malachiteand scholars have probed into the life of that nation with every tool of ingenuity. We know which Pharaoh ascended the throne in which year; we know what the hieroglyphs say and even how much beer the Egyptians drank. But for all this, their world, haunting, mysterious, ever-beckoning but ever-receding, holds us at a distance. We approach it as we might approach the sun setting in a Saharan landscapewe appear to come closer, but we never do.

One of the strangest and most distinctive features of Egyptian art reinforces this impression. Their paintings depict the faces of figures in profile, while the eyes remain frontal. We see only one side of the face and one eyebut that eye appears to be gazing at the viewer. Thus it is with Egypt as a whole: it confronts us directly with its single eye (an ancient symbol of spiritual perception), but half its face is always averted. The ceaseless flow of books, excavations, museum exhibits, and bizarre theories of alternative history constantly promises to reveal this hidden side of the face of Egypt, but somehow it never does.

Thom Cavallis Embodying Osiris highlights another way of looking at the ancient Egyptians. It takes their central myththe death and resurrection of Osirisas an illustration of certain processes that occur both in the universe and in the human psyche. As Cavalli suggests, it may be more accurate to see the Egyptian gods not so much as divine personages ruling over certain isolated spheres of reality, as the Greeks and Romans of late antiquity did (so that Mars presides over war somewhat like a secretary of defense), but as the embodiments of certain fundamental processes.

To understand this view, we might turn to a work that is as old as the myths of Egypt. The Indian Rig Veda (much of which was composed, probably, in the second millennium BC) includes a hymn to a storm god named Vata. Part of it says, Moving along his paths in the middle realm of space, he does not rest even for a single day. Friend of the waters, first-born keeper of the Law, where was he born? What was he created from? Breath of the gods, embryo of the universe, this god wanders wherever he pleases. His sounds are heard, but his form is not seen. Let us worship the gale with oblation.