Normandi Ellis - Imagining the World into Existence: An Ancient Egyptian Manual of Consciousness

For my parents
Edward Earl Ellis (19191999)
and
Virginia Fitzgerald Ellis (19232009)

IMAGINING THE WORLD INTO EXISTENCE

Normandi Ellis takes her reader on an extraordinary journey into the myths and magic of Ancient Egypt. And the journey is as beautiful, fragrant, and mysterious as Egypt itself.

TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER GANDY, AUTHORS OF
THE HERMETICA AND THE JESUS MYSTERIES

This remarkable book emulates Egypt itself; it fuses philosophy, religion, art, and science into a single inextricable Unity. Like an accomplished Egyptian temple or sculpture, it looks effortless yet is extremely subtle and complex. It resonates Egypt. It breathes Egypt. It is almost like actually being there! Not many books do that.

JOHN ANTHONY WEST, AUTHOR OF SERPENT IN THE SKY AND
THE TRAVELERS KEY TO ANCIENT EGYPT

Bravo! At last, the book from Normandi Ellis we have all been waiting for! Her knowledge and direct connection to the myths, the glyphs, and the symbolism of ancient Egypt have given us the clearest statement ever of the cosmology and relevant truths written in the scrolls. This book is a must for anyone seriously interested in the magic of ancient Egypt. Im awed and inspired by its brilliance!

NICKI SCULLY, COAUTHOR OF SHAMANIC MYSTERIES
OF EGYPT AND THE ANUBIS ORACLE

Normandi Elliss work of a lifetime began when she wrote Awakening Osiris, her ecstatic translation of the hieroglyphs found in the ancient Egyptian Book of the dead. It culminates nearly 30 years hence in her newest book, Imagining the World into Existence. In 1988 she said: We make of ourselves what we imagine. now, in 2012, we see she has imagined well.

ALAN RICHARDSON, COAUTHOR OF
THE INNER GUIDE TO EGYPT

Acknowledgments

This work is a culmination of thirty years of experience, study, and thought that, by its nature, has been influenced by many individuals. If your name appears in my bibliography, it is certain that your life and work have been pivotal to my thinking. I especially want to thank Nicki Scully, John Anthony West, and Jean Houston for many years of friendship and support. It would have been a very different life without your presence in it. I thank Jon Graham, acquisitions editor at Inner Traditions, for seeing the merit in this project, and Ray Grasse, Alan Richardson, John Darnell, and Greg Reeder for their generous permission to quote and use their material.

Thanks to the artists and photographers who brought to life the images of EgyptKaren Kaplan Klein, Jane Brantley, Cathleen Shattuck, Patricia Haynes, my daughter Alaina Schroth, and cover artist Lucie Lamy. For their close readings of the text, I offer special thanks to Anne Dillon, my editor at Inner Traditions, whose careful editing and coaxing elevated the work, and to David Hurt, my husband, who gave this work an in-depth reading above and beyond the duty of any spouse. I thank him especially for opening the way for this work to enter, for growing the garden, tending our home, and nobly embodying the Green Man, Osiris. I am deeply grateful to my many friends in Chesterfield, Indianaand especially my mentors Reverand Glenda Cadarette and Reverand A. Win Srogi, who saw and encouraged the future potential of this work.

More than all of that, I must acknowledge the spiritual integrity and the heritage of Egypts great metaphysicians, scribes, and master teachers, whose lives and work so influenced mine. And I am grateful to have been given this life to live, this book to write, and this Creator to serve.

Dog in the Night

I can feel a dogs furry face as he pushes his wet nose under my hand.

But this is a hospital

They wouldnt let a dog in here?

This late at night?

Should I buzz for the nurse?

I cant move my hand.

I must be dreaming.

No, Im very much awake.

And I can feel the dogs furry face as he pushes his wet nose under my hand.

I stroke his head.

He wants to play.

How can I play with a dog... ?

Now I am sitting up, something I havent done for weeks.

A black dog, so friendly, no collar, no leash.

He must have run away from somewhere.

He wants me to follow him.

But I cant... yes I can, Im walking behind him.

Come on doggie. Ill take you home.

But... no... hes taking me home.

HAROLD MOSS (19372010),
WORDS FROM A SILENT MAN

Foreword

Quite simply, this is a masterpiece. It is the life work of the numinous poet, writer, and Egyptian scholar Normandi Ellis. to read this work is to be planted with the seed of once and future mysteries. It is to become alive to the depth and genius of ancient Egypt in ways that give us keys to the portals that reveal our own unique capacities. And it is to uncover and bring to light something that the ancient Egyptians knew and that this profound book revealsthe archetypal basis of our reality.

We think about Egypt. We are drawn into Egypt. Egypt is farmed in our souls. During all my years of working with the imagery of the inner life, the emblems and attributes of Egypt recur again and again. In dreams and reveries, the symbols of Egypt rise to the inner vision: we see scarabs and ankhs, winged disks of the Sun. We long for our pilgrimage to the foot of the sphinx, as if it could speak our deepest knowing. We recognize and relish the images of pharaonic masks and animal-headed gods that reside in every major museum throughout the world. We imagine vividly that eternally green oasis of the Nile Valley split by the life-giving blue river. Egypt seizes the Western psyche and we feel a collective shock of recognition. she seems to promise, Travel where you may, do whatever you must, you will never forget me. and indeed I have traveled...

In the predawn call of the muezzin, in the late afternoon playing of a flute in the marketplace, I have heard the music that ripples across the friezes in the tombs of ancient musicians. On the curved lips of merchants in the night bazaar, Ive noted the same beatific smiles as those that appear on the granite faces of the kings in Karnak.

The same dawn that bespoke the moment of creation to the ancient priestess washes across the faces of countless Egyptiansthe light-skinned young businessmen in Cairo crossing the street, the dark Nubian children of Aswan weaving garlands, the sun-bronzed Bedouin camel drivers walking through the smoke of campfires below the dusty yellow plateau of Giza, and the almond-eyed gatekeepers smoking cigarettes outside the temple of Edfu.

In the dark heart of the Great Pyramid, Ive spent the night staring into the dark, hearing the echo of ancient cantors and feeling the timeless pulse of the universe. On the edges of the desert, at the foot of the pyramids, I have looked up and seen the vibrant stars that are the gods in hiding, the souls waiting to be born. As the wind blows across the desert sands, I can imagine the shushing sounds of the bare feet of dancing tribal women as they make supplications to their goddess.