During
the time of Scorpio, late October to late November, the ancient Egyptians
remembered the murder of Asar by his brother Set. Thus began the dramatic
Heliopolitan myth involving Asar (Osiris to the Greeks), his wife Auset (Isis),
Set, and Set’s wife Nebt-Het.Asar is one of my personal neteru, one of four whom I honor and with whom I journey. The ancient Egyptians associated Asar with the East, the rising sun, and new birth. But I have always imagined him to be in the West, the watery place of death, transformation and rebirth. While a powerful symbol, Asar was for me a silent deity that I perceived as emotionally remote, even a bit fearful.
Set’s notorious murder plot involved waiting till a family dinner was becoming jovially festive, then parading in an exquisite mummy case which he offered to present to anyone who might fit into it. Since Set had commissioned creation of the mummy case using exact dimensions of Asar’s body, it was only a matter of minutes before the unwitting king had climbed into the box, allowed it to be closed around him, and was quickly kidnapped and murdered by his brother.
What a disconnect this has seemed to me! Here is the Foremost Among His Brethren, tricked, trapped and eliminated by a pretender to the throne, through no more than a sinister party gag. Everyone knew that Set was a troublemaker; how could great Asar have fallen for his game?
Still, I have kept my altar lit for many years in remembrance of Asar and Auset, waiting and watching for the time I would gain deeper understanding of his mysteries.
Ironically, my journey through the underworld Duat, my dark night of the soul, began around the time of my mother’s death last year. She passed on November 13th, very close, I suppose, to the 17th of Athys, the date the ancients observed Asar’s death. Her passing was the first of a number of dominoes which proceeded to fall, over and over, until I myself tumbled into the Duat-like darkness.
Having come to appreciate over the years the cyclic nature of existence, I held on for the ride, and eventually the darkness began to lift for me. If I was wary of Asar before, I now regarded him with considerably more apprehension. I began to liken him to Pluto and myself to Persephone. Throughout that dark journey, I saw neither an Anpu (Anubis) or Hecate to accompany me, though I held tenaciously to the belief I would come out on the other side eventually.
Although the Mistress of All Spells and Magic, Auset, bravely defied Set to reassemble her husband’s dismembered body and restore him to life, it was not without years of travail and heartache. Surely that first winter of her husband’s death must have felt as out of control as Demeter’s deranged search for her daughter Persephone.
The ancient papyri do not say, but Auset surely must have spent at least some bitter hours of anger at her husband’s foolishness. How could he have been so naïve, and left her to fight for the throne against their brutish brother?
While meditating recently, I reflected on my many acts of foolishness, looking for meaning in the labyrinthine turns of my life. In an instant, there was a dark figure at my side, and I was enveloped by a love I can only imagine would come from someone who saw his own flaws in me. Asar spoke words of power in my ear, “I, too, have made mistakes. They set me on my journey, and now I am transformed, a Neter.”
Such tenderness, so noble in its humility, such balm to my wounds. I needed no more words, and the healing passed through my soul like dawn through the morning sky. My Lord Asar had become my Brother Asar; cloaked in his powerful love, I became his beloved Auset, capable of enduring and overcoming. This is heka, deep magic, indeed. When the gods see in us their humanity, they reveal the mirror by which we may see our god-ness.
“For man is a being of divine nature; he is comparable, not to the other living creatures upon earth, but to the gods in heaven. Nay, if we are to speak the truth without fear, . . . None of the gods of heaven will ever quit heaven, . . . but man ascends even to heaven and measures it. We must not shrink then from saying that a man on earth is a mortal god, and that a god in heaven is an immortal man.” Hermetica: Libellus X:24b, “The Key”
For me, Egypt is the land of spiritual rebirth. But others have discovered their transformation with great ones bearing different names: Dionysus, Inanna, Jesus. It is true that many who sojourn on earth seek neither transformation nor divinity. Long after dreams of immortality fade into tedious years of decline, they forget what fires drove a desire to live forever. To those stagnant souls, I say, “May you return in love, to discover in another lifetime of what stardust you are made.”
And during this season, my candle is lit for the Black Neter who returns in the spring as green as the crops fed by the Nile. By making his journey, I, too, am reborn, renewed, Osirified.