Nile: The Celestial Stream

 

"'Egypt is the image of the skies,' writes Lucie Lamie, 'where the divine beings sail 'the waters on high,'' and so the Nile has a heavenly as well as earthly source…Its periodic rise and fall are associated with the myth of Osiris, divine principle of perpetual return, death and rebirth, as symbolized by the annual cycle of vegetation… In Roman times the Nile was itself called 'the Year.' As one scholar notes, 'This conception not only reflects the rather precise annual recurrence of the flood, but also sought to relate it to the magical powers of Time." Seeing that the Egyptians saw the Nile as "the exact counterpart of heaven" and "the year incarnate,' it is only appropriate that the Nile, spelled as it was in ancient Greek, totals 365, the number of days in the year…"

Nile=365

 

"Akhnaton Intones New Hymns to Aton, the One God.

Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World (the Lower realm of the West),

Thou bringest it as thou desirest,

To preserve alive the people of Egypt.

For thou hast made them for Thyself,

Thou Lord of them all, who weariest Thyself for them.

All the distant highland countries,

Thou makest also their life, Thou didst set the Nile in the sky.

When it falleth for them,

It maketh waves upon the mountains,

Like the great green sea,

Watering their fields in their towns.

 

How benevolent are Thy designs, O Lord of eternity!

There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers And for the antelopes of all the highlands that go about on their feet.

But the Nile, it cometh from the Nether World for Egypt." Translated by James H. Breasted, the Dawn of Conscience.

 

"Dost thou speak of statues, Thrice Majestic? Yes, of statues, Asclepios…of what else shall I speak but of the statues, so full of life, of feeling, the prophetic statues which predict the future by bestowing dreams and bt all manner of other ways…Are thou not aware O Asclepios, THAT EGYPT IS THE IMAGE OF HEAVEN, OR RATHER THAT IT IS THE PROJECTION BELOW OF THE ORDER OF THINGS ABOVE?If the truth must be known, this land is indeed the Temple of the world.

Nevertheless, since sages ought to forsee all things, there is one thing thou must know: a time will come when it will seem that the Egyptians have adored the gods so piously in vain, and that all their holy invocations have been barren and unheeded. Divinity will quit the earth and return to heaven, forsaking Egypt, its ancient abode.

Then this earth, hallowed by so many shrines and temples, will be filled with sepulchres and with the dead. O Egypt! There will remain of thy religion only vague legends which posterity will refuse to believe…But yet sadder things will come to pass. Egypt will fall into apostasy, the worst of all evils. Egypt, once the holy land beloved of the gods and full of devotion will become an instrument of perversion, the school of impiety, the type of all violence. Then filled with disgust for everything, a man will no longer feel either admiration or love for the world. He will turn away from the beautiful work, the most perfect alike in the present, the past, and the future. Nor will the langour and weariness of souls permit anything to remain save the disdain for the whole universe, this immutable work of God, this glorious and perfect ediface, this manifold synthesis of forms and images, wherein the will of the Lord has united all things in a harmonious and single whole, worthy forever of veneration, of praise and love. Then darkness will be preferred before light, and death will be deemed better than life, nor will men lift up their eyes to heaven.

In those days religious men will be thought mad; the impious men will be hailed as sages; savage men will be deemed valient, and the evil-hearted will be applauded as the best of men…

And thus God is above the summit of heaven, yet everywhere present and beholding all things. For beyond the heavens is a sphere without stars, transcending all corporate things…And to those whom it will be given to dominate the earth shall be sent forth and established AT THE EXTREMITY OF EGYPT, IN A CITY BUILT TOWARD THE WEST, whither by sea and by land, shall flow all the race of mortals." The Hermetic Works, The Virgin of the World, translated by Dr. Anna Kingsford, pp.71-75.

This higher Egypt, whose boundaries extend from the ancient East all the way to America, gives epic meaning to the words: and their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified... (Revelation 11:8)