The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 30 Scales Scales Tekh, Tekha, Tekhi Above are examples of the Egyptian glyph for the scales of Justice (Maat). The Tekh or Tekha is the little plummet weight that is used to adjust the tongue of the scales in the center so that the measurement is accurate. On the right are two versions of the glyph for the plummet. They also sometimes used the glyph to represent the Tekha or Tekhi. Sometimes they added the ibis radical. T Kh i Then Tekhi became the ibis bird. With the glyph for Tekhuti it became a nickname or title of the god Thoth Tekhi. The Scales of Justice represented the centerpiece of Egyptian culture. It was so important that Tekhi was the name of the first month of the Egyptian year. The Tekhi was the centerpiece or critical pivot point of the Scales of Justice. Note that they often drew the Tekhi plummet so that it looked like the glyph for the heart. Indeed it was the heart of Egyptian culture. The tableau of the Weighing of the Heart in the Hall of Justice effectively was the emblem of Egyptian culture. Anubis, the god of Death traditionally knelt below the scales and adjusted the plummet while Thoth recorded the measurement. Maat provided the feather as a counterweight in one pan, while the Heart occupied the other pan. However, Thoth had a habit of transforming himself into Qeftenu. As this little
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 31 ape-god he would squat over the tongue of the Scales and monkey with the adjustment. This showed that Man, in his very animal nature, had the inborn capacity to transcend the inexorable limitation of Death and infuse Life with the whimsical fun of Heaven. Babai, a special spiritual scion of Thoth, was the one other god with the animagus ability to transform into an ape. He could manifest as a randy baboon. Thoth seems to have had a special relationship with Isis. I suspect that the firstborn son of Isis may have been fathered by Thoth rather than Osiris. Another possibility is that Thoth was a blood relative with Osiris and Isis several generations back. This might explain how one of the sons of Horus had ape-like features. Anubis must also have been part of the family, (possibly on the female side) because his genes show up in another son of Horus. The Tekhi plummet as the pivot on the Scales of Justice is the origin of the Taiji as the pivot of the I-jing cosmology. This word passed into Chinese as a direct transliteration of the original Egyptian using Chinese characters that also suggested the function of the object. The is related to fate, and both are ideograms that represent the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ceremony that empowered a person to create his own fate. ji ming The above drawings show the ancient forms of the characters ji and ming. Ji means ultimate, extreme, absolute. Ming means fate or command. The ideogram shows a man in a sheltered place bowing to a mouth, or opening his mouth. A hand holds a staff of authority. The staff is the Ur Hekau used in initiations to touch the mouth of the initiate and transmit to him the power mantras that give him authority over his universe, that raise him to the level of Osiris, the Immortal Pharaoh. The tree radical attached to ji emphasizes the wooden staff (the Tarot suit of Wands). The connection of Babai with the panther carried over into the Greek tradition, but was gradually distorted due to different geographical conditions and cultural values. The Greek word panther has two related derivations. Pan () means all. It was the name of a god of the fields, forests, and flocks. He had a human body with goat horns and legs. He represented the ability to accept all of Nature. He carried a magic wand called the thyrsis (). This was a wooden staff entwined with ivy and topped with a pine cone. This is an adaptation of the Ur-Hekau of Baba. The
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 32 ivy replaces the undulating serpent body, and the pine cone represents the cobra hood. The staff has phallic imagery, and the pine suggests the evergreen of immortality, an idea common to northern tribes that is perpetuated in our use of evergreen decorations in the Christmas season. However, this is not the whole story. The word thyra () in Greek is the same as our English door. It meant a double door. We use this word in English to refer to the thyroid gland, an organ at the base of the throat that resembles a double door. This is the Throat Chakra. The Pyramid Text (Unas, Utt. 313, et al.) specifically refers to opening the double doors of Heaven. In the typical Egyptian manner this is a pun referring to the Opening of the Mouth ceremony and to the opening of the labia prior to penetration during intercourse. Sexual intercourse is the most intimate form of physical communication between people. The Pyramid Texts are exhorting people to Open the Double Doors of Heaven and communicate. Speech is a communication tool that makes use of the Throat Chakra. However a true meeting of the minds (Heaven) requires honesty and intimacy and openness that can only be matched during sexual intercourse between two true Lovers. The point of the Egyptians is that if people truly open their Hearts and communicate honestly, they will live together in peace and harmony and experience an ecstatic state of love that is just like the orgasm of sexual intercourse even in their daily interactions with people around them. Another meaning of the word Tekhi, when written with the jar radical, was a kind of drink or to become drunk. t kh i Tekh meant to sop bread in wine or beer and then eat it. Or you could mush the whole thing together. The bread mixture enabled you to drink more without getting drunk and also rendered the whole thing a simple meal. The Christian Eucharist ceremony almost certainly evolved out of this ancient practice. This also connects to the figure of Bacchus, or Dionysus, the god of wine and orgies in celebration of the fertile power of Nature. Originally Dionysus was the god of whirling, the ecstatic sacred dance that is perpetuated by the Sufis. The name Dio-nysus means the god of Nyssus, a hill sacred to Bacchus. The nyssus was the post around which the chariots pivoted in the hippodrome. It may also be the origin of the May-pole. Our words dynamic and dynamo express the idea of whirling vortexes of energy and great strength.
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 33 Baba, or Babai, or Bebi, was a god of great virility. He wore the leopard or panther skin. What is the connection here between Baba and Tekhi? Tekhuti was the god of writing. Baba was the god of paper. Paper was made from the papyrus reeds that grew along the Nile where the ibis lived. When the papyrus was made into paper and glyphs drawn on the paper, it resembled the tawny hide of a leopard with spots all over it. So the leopard was the animal representing the power of the written word. The leopard was a form of Sekhmet, the solar life-force energy. The Egyptian scribes captured that energy in the form of writing and made it immortal by inscribing it on papyrus, wood, and stone media. The papyrus reed pen was the magic phallic wand with which the priest opened the mouth to transfer speech into writing. They could then open the mouth and transform the writing back into speech. The drops of blood from the phallus of Ra from which Baba sprang represent the drops of ink from the pen that formed letters and words on the papyrus. Our English word Bible comes from the Greek word for papyrus ( ). Thus the Secret in the Bible that Tony Bushby speaks of really is the Bible itself and the letters with which it is written. Throughout his book he places two pillars at the head of each chapter. These are the two pillars at the entrance of the Temple of Solomon. They also appear in Egyptian temples. These are the legs of Min. The glyph for a leg in Egyptian represents the letter B. Therefore the two pillars taken together spell the name BaBa. The door between them is the Mouth. This iconography of twin pillars or twin towers is clearly encoded in the Tarot Trump of the High Priestess, and occurs as well in several other Trumps. (It was also encoded in the Twin Towers of New York City, the modern-day version of Egyptian monolithic iconographic architecture.) Thus we come to the realization that the word for Bible, or paper, or papyrus, originally was The Mouth of BaBa, or BaBaRe (Ba-Ba-eR). B B R This was the original Tower of Babel. Bab-El in Hebrew means Gate of God. Literally it is a pair of pylons with the phallus of the bull (Ra, the Sun God) passing through. This became the name of Babylon. The optional radical indicates a country. The Twin Pylons of Ramesses in the Temple of Luxor represent Babai. To make sure you did not miss the symbol, there was a huge pair of obelisks in the courtyard just outside the pylons. One of them remains standing today.
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 34 The obelisk at Luxor. Photo (c) Mark Millmore, 1997-2004.. One of the Pylons of Ramesses at Luxor seen from the inside of the Court of Ramesses. Photo (c) Mark Millmore, 1997-2004. The Twin Pylons forming the entrance to the Temple of A-Man at Luxor, showing the
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 35 obelisk of Ramesses and two colossal statues of Ramesses at the entrance. One of the obelisks was taken by the French to Place de la Concorde in Paris, where it stands today. Photo, (c) Mark Millmore, 1997-2004. The pharaoh associated with this portion of the Temple is Ramesses, or Ra Moses. The pharaohs of the 19 th and 20 th dynasties used the names Ra Amen Moses. RA A Men N Mes S S The short form was just Remesses (Ra Moses). This is the actual historical figure of Moses. The story in the Bible about Moses and Ramesses is an allegory about an inner spiritual struggle on the path to enlightenment, not the story of a bunch of Jews oppressed by Egyptians and then leaving the country. Moses and Ramesses are the same person. The city dedicated to Babi was called Bubastis by the Greeks. it Per Bast.. Per B Ba AS T The Egyptians called This is the Temple of the Throne of BaBa. It is also the Temple of Bast. Bast was the goddess of the Cats. She was the domesticated version of Sekhmet, the lioness. The symbol for the city was an erect phallus or lingam. vase for unguents. name of the goddess Bastet of Bubastis. This was used ritually as a Another form of unguent vase glyph looked like this, as in the Ba A S T T The panther or leopard was halfway between the lion and the cat. a translation into Hebrew of words connected to this ancient tradition. The leo-pard was
The I-jing in Ancient Egypt (c) Douglass A. White, 2004 36 The LEO portion of the word (LB in Hebrew) means lion in Latin, but Heart in Hebrew. The lion was the totem of the Sun, the Source of Life. The PRD$ portion of the word usually is understood to mean a garden. It came to refer to the Garden of Eden. Our word paradise is a direct descendant from pardes. The Song of Solomon describes the Garden of Solomon as pardes rimonim, a garden or orchard of pomegranates. The pomegranate became a major decorative motif in the Temple of Solomon and was a symbol of fertility and Life Energy. The leopard as a symbol translates into the Paradise of the Heart. The expression PRD$ probably goes back to Egyptian and means the Temple (per) of the Self (des). The Egyptian word des clusters with tches, deser, desher, tcheser, and includes meanings such as red (the color of blood), splendid, exalted. It also seems to refer to some kind of temple door. So the point of the whole mysterious tradition is that Paradise is to be found within the Exalted Temple of the Self deep in the Heart of each person. The Hebrew points us to the center or heart of the orchard. The reversed reading of this word suggests that it is the Secret ($D) of Unfolding (RP) what is Not (BL).