The Sungod's Journey through the Netherworld: Reading the Ancient Egyptian Amduat

Twelfth Hour

twelfth hour The End of the Primeval Darkness The Long-Awaited Birth Twelfth Hour 186 For one last time, the Sungod tarries in the netherworld. The name of the place heralds the end of the nocturnal journey:“Cavern of the end of the primeval darkness.” Those who dwell on the riverbanks rejoice and acclaim Re; but despite this all-pervasive jubilation, there is no forgetting that here, too, even after the rebirth of the Great Ba-Soul,Apopis must be warded off. Once more, reverence is displayed toward Osiris, who must remain in the depths of the netherworld and endure its dim light. In the lower register, the ten gods standing in front of his mummy praise him: Live, Living one, Foremost of his darkness! Live, Great one, Foremost of his darkness, Lord of life, Ruler of the West, Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, and live, Living one, Foremost of the Netherworld! The breath of Re belongs to your nose, the breathing of Khepri is with you, so that you live and remain alive! Hail to Osiris, Lord of life! The separation from Osiris and his realm is inevitable. But these gods who offer praise know that all life will eventually return to him—hence their fervent wish for the continued life of the great god of the depths of the earth. The opening lines of the text of the twelfth hour refer to the mystery of the rebirth of the sun: This great god is born in his manifestations of Khepri at this cavern. Nun and Naunet, Hehu and Hehut, emerge at this cavern at the birth of this great god, that he goes forth from the netherworld, places himself in the day-barque, and appears from the thighs of Nut. Three different images of creation are commingled in these few lines. The first image is that of the Khepri beetle that spontaneously emerges from the darkness of the netherworld and, as the morning sun, inaugurates a new era. This image is seemingly the simplest of the three, yet it is the most mysterious. Psychologically, the scarab emerging from the darkness End of the Primeval Darkness 187 points to the possibility of a spontaneous manifestation of unconscious material, as happens, for instance, in a synchronistic event. By synchronistic event, we mean, as already noted,“the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully, but not causally, connected events.”1 Somewhat paradoxically , we might say that synchronistic events are unique acts of creation , just-so stories, unpredictable yet meaningful accidents. In a dream, for example, we may perceive an event that does not in fact occur until the next day. “As one cannot perceive a fact that does not exist, we must assume that it has some form of existence, so that it can be perceived nevertheless. To explain it,” says C. G. Jung in a letter to J. B. Rhine, “we must assume that the (future) objective fact is paralleled by a similar or identical subjective, i.e., psychic, already existing arrangement which cannot be explained as an anticipatory causal effect.”2 Referring to these ideas, Jung later postulates a “foreknowledge of some kind,” which is certainly not connected with the ego, but “rather a selfsubsistent ‘unconscious’ knowledge.”Jung suggests calling it an“absolute knowledge.”3 We have probably all had the experience of focusing our thoughts on someone, only to have the phone ring at that very moment, and it turns out to be that very person who is calling. And to those who are deeply in love, synchronistic events occur quite often. Such events show there must be something like an underlying meaning or “knowledge” that gives direction to daily occurrences and daily consciousness. The principle of synchronicity offers an important and, I believe, elucidative explanation for such events, and it compels us to a kind of thinking that is diametrically opposed to our usual thinking in terms of causality. The implication of quantum theory points in the same direction. Observations of the atomic and subatomic world have made it clear that 1 C. G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, vol. 8 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. and trans. G. Adler and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), § 849. 2 C. G. Jung, Letter of C. G. Jung to J. B. Rhine, August 9, 1954, in Letters, ed. G. Adler and A. Jaffe, trans. R. F. C. Hull...