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213 Glossary Aker: As living personification of earth and the netherworld, Aker is one of the earth gods. He acts as guardian over the entrance and exit gates of the netherworld—hence his form of double lion, double sphinx, or double bull. In the fifth hour of the Amduat, he guards the “secret flesh,” that is, the corpse of the Sungod or of Osiris, and thus he sustains the mystery of the renewal of life at the utmost border of chaos. Symbolically, he indicates the rebirth of consciousness after a period of depression, deepest introversion, and darkness. In this sense, he represents not only the deepest point of the netherworld but also the doorway and access to the beyond. akh: A blessed, imperishable dead person whose physical and spiritual vitality does not cease. As early as the Pyramid Texts, the king is called an akh-spirit “who is in charge of the Nile” (Pyramid Texts § 155). Literally, akh refers to something shining or illuminating, the light of which braves the darkness of death. In psychological terms, the akh-spirit indicates a luminosity that has its origin in the collective unconscious (the Sungod and his regenerative power) and generates a fluent (Nile) light of consciousness that cannot be extinguished by any darkness, not even that of death. Accordingly, the Amduat says that the akh-spirit is someone “who masters his two feet.” Anubis: Anubis, who is responsible for the embalming process, is mostly depicted with the head of a black canine (jackal). He watches over the mysteries connected with the coffin and escorts the deceased on their way to the afterlife. Apopis: A frightful serpent and archenemy of the Sungod who has to be defeated again and again. He is the personification of chaos, evil, and nonbeing. Deprived of all his sense organs, he does not belong to this world. His roar resounds throughout the netherworld. From a psychological perspective, he incarnates a threatening dimension of the collective unconscious that in Christian tradition was either rejected as the devil or understood as Deus absconditus, the dark, unfathomable side of the divine itself. Glossary 214 Atum: In Atum, the Lord of all, the original oneness of the universe is manifested. As a primeval being, he becomes the creator par excellence. As the oldest of the Ennead of Heliopolis, he is “alone in the Abyss” (Book of the Dead spell 17), the self-created great god from whom all other deities emanate. Later he becomes the evening manifestation of the Sungod. As such, he is the old one who descends into the depths, exhausted from his day’s work, and thus the opposite of Khepri, the newborn solar child who is greeted with jubilation in the morning. In fact, these are but two different aspects of one and the same great soul. These solar aspects of Atum refer to the experience of the self, inner wholeness, and the divine, which cannot be understood intellectually but only through love. baboons: The baboons belong to the traditional entourage of the Sungod. They greet him at his arrival, adoring and venerating him. In the first hour of the Amduat, they welcome him with great joy and open the way for his ba. The baboons are also a manifestation of Thoth. In the form in which they appear in the Amduat, they represent the enlivening wisdom and foreknowledge of the animal soul. ba-soul: A manifestation of a psychic-spiritual entity that, in connection with the Sungod, is called the Great Ba-soul. Through him, all living beings, all blessed dead, and all deities regularly receive new life. In the pyramid age, the deceased pharaoh wished that his freely moving, birdlike ba-soul might ascend from his corpse to the sky and to the gods so that he might become “one of them.” In later times, however, after Senwosret II (c. 1890 BC), the great mystery of the union between the freely moving ba-soul of the Sungod and his (or Osiris’s) corpse was believed to take place in the deepest part of the netherworld (Amduat, sixth hour). All the blessed dead and all the deities wished to take part in this mysterious union of the Sungod’s ba-soul with his corpse. The ba represents a part of the psyche related to that spiritual and heavenly realm that causes our wanderlust. The ba thus differs from the ka, which is connected with the realization of life through one’s descendents. corpse of the Sungod: In...

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