Theos-Talk Archives (September 1993 Message tl00020)

Wow!  Only a few days went by, and some 17 new messages have been
posted.  I am having difficulties keeping up.  Glad to see some
old friends join us.  Hello Kim, its good to hear from you.  I am
glad to hear that the old postings are still on PeaceNet.  I am
sorry to hear that things are "fallow" there.  I fully agree with
Eldon, who listed several reasons for PeaceNet's demise.
Hopefully CompuServe will do better.  It costs more, but there is
a lot more to do here.  I have ported a few articles from
PeaceNet over to the New Age Forum, and have also placed a couple
of my programs there.  I have been learning to program for
Windows 3.1 in C for the last year.  I also have been attending
school, and both Betty and I have now got our Masters degree.
I also want to say hello to Brenda, who gave me a lot of feedback
on PeaceNet.

Brenda asked about my discussions ("stimulating conflicts")with
Don.  I forget how we got started.  I think someone mentioned
that the Study Group take a look at Besant and Leadbeater's
OCCULT CHEMISTRY, and thats how we got to talking about science.
I mentioned my ENOCHIAN PHYSICS, and someone said the word
"statistics" and we were deep into it.  But our discussions are
peripheral to the Study Group, and are intended to be informal
while the group itself forms into some kind of structure.  I
agree that picking on selected verbiage is counter-productive and
I am going to quit.  But, if nothing else, I think our
discussions have set a tone for any science-oriented study work
that we decide to do.  I believe that we all have agreed that the
idea of relating science to theosophy and/or vice versa is a good
way to start our group (those who first signed up were all
science-oriented).  However, I have yet to read OCCULT CHEMISTRY.

About my book on Egyptian translations, let me try to be brief.
I have always felt a rapport with ancient Egypt.  One day I
purchased Budge's EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE as well as his book on the
Papyrus of Ani (I currently have most of his works, and THE MUMMY
is pretty good).  Out of curiosity, I matched Budges' rules with
his own translations.  I discovered that he deviated a lot from
his own rules.  When I inserted his own transliterations (from
his Language book) into his translations, they made more sense
than what he had done himself.  So why did he deliberately
deviate from his own transliterations?  I speculate that he was
biased.  A lot of early Egyptologists thought that the ancient
Egyptians were ignorant savages.  I can't recall where I read it,
but I remember reading one Egyptologist who wrote that they were
incapable of philosophic thought.  The result is that we have a
6,000-year old society with math, arts, architecture,
agriculture, etc, whose language was mostly gibberish and whose
religion was based on superstition.  Modern Egyptologists have
lightened up on this somewhat.  But even new translations, such
as that by R.O. Faulkner, are mostly garbage and nonsense.  This
is not entirely true, and several excellent translations are now
available (see THE SHRINES OF TUT-ANKH-AMON by Piankoff, for
example).  Anyway, this led me to try doing my own translations
using Budge's own language book as a guide.  I spent 8 years, off
and on, working on this.  Meanwhile I had three Enochian Magic
books published.  One day, at a convention, my publisher asked me
if I knew anyone who wrote about ancient Egypt, because the
subject was selling well.  I told him about my translations and
later sent him a typescript.  He wrote back saying that they were
nice, but unsellable.  Then I got my wife into the act, and she
edited my work and wrote stuff about talismans, inserted
pictures, and so on.  Also, I decided to try an experiment.  A
lot of occult writers (W.W. Wescott for one) taught that the Book
of the Dead was originally written as a set of rituals for the
living.  I decided to see how hard it would be to turn my own
translations (written as verbiage spoken by a priest over a
corpse) into living rituals.  I was amazed at how easy it was.
It only required a tiny tweak.  The "rubric" became written
guidelines for the ritual, and everything else was to be spoken.
I changed "the Osiris Ani" into "the osirified magician" (I
believe HPB used the term osirified) and the Book of the Dead
became a book of rituals for the living (Coming Into the Light).
We resubmitted this and the publisher liked it so much, he wrote
the introduction to the book.  I am very happy with the book, but
sad that it has sold so poorly.  The problem is, I have no
Egyptian credentials, and so my book is not taken seriously by
Egyptologists.

If you are interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics, I recommend the
"bible,"  which is Gardiner's EGYPTIAN GRAMMAR, which costs about
$65.  I got my copy from the Oriental Institute in Chicago.  A
real nice introduction is HIEROGLYPHICS WITHOUT MYSTERY by Karl-
Theodor Zauzich (trans by Ann Macy Roth, pub by University of
Texas Press).  EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS FOR EVERYONE by Joseph and
Lenore Scott is also nice.

I had to make some hard choices as to translations.  I found that
the ancient Egyptians used terse technical terms, much like the
"pith instructions" of Tibetan Buddhists.  They assumed that the
reader understood the definitions.  Let me give you one quick
example.  On page 17 of COMING INTO THE LIGHT, I show the glyphs
for seta and shes (using the old transliterations) as "the
subplane of solidification" and the "subplane of dispersion."
These glyphs are translated by Egyptologists in all sorts of ways
- very inconsistent.  I made the decision to use these
translations, and stuck to it.  Every time they came up in a
text, I used "subplane of solidification" or "subplane of
dispersion."  So, I was at least consistent, and they fit with
the context as well.  Do you know how many translations of the
Gita are available, or of the Tao Te Ching?  Lots.  Everyone
acknowledges that Sanskrit is adaptable to several possible
meanings.  But Egyptologists are loth to do the same with ancient
Egyptian while freely admitting that the glyphs will vary in
meaning with the "context."  Anyway, I think that my translations
are at least as valid as anyone elses.  Brenda, do you recall the
topic on PeaceNet that I wrote about the Globes and Paths of the
Gupta Vidya Model?  I used the 7-Plane 12-Globe Model provided by
G de Purucker in his FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY (see
page 499 for example).  Well, I have taken those ideas and
written a whole book on it.  It is in typescript now.  The point
is, Globe B-prime (the Globe above Globe A) is equivalent to the
"subplane of solidification" while Globe F-prime (the Globe right
above Globe G) is equivalent to the "subplane of dispersion."  In
other words, I have been able to link the Egyptian Model with the
Gupta-Vidya Model.  This helps confirm, to me, that my
translations are on the right track.

Well, I think this is enough for now.  Again, hello to my old
PeaceNet friends.  May our lives be lightened by our sharing
together.  Brenda, your "I am the path" is an excellent mantra.
Mine is "love is the law" which has been a big help to me.

                                              Jerry