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This was the highest work of magic, the Spiritual Alchemy or the Transmutation from human Force to Divine Potency. As is said by the great Iamblichus, in section iv., chapter ii., of The Mysteries: "The Priest who invokes is a man; but when he commands powers it is because through arcane symbols, he, in a certain respect, is invested with the sacred Form of the Gods." Iamblichus also tells us that the daimon or elemental
*I am He Who cometh forth as One Who breaketh open the Gates: and Everlasting is the Daylight which His will hath created. I know (have power over) the Deep Waters, is my Name.
"I shine forth as the Lord of Life and the glorious Law of Light.
"I come as the Ambassador of the Lord of Lords to avenge the cause of Osiris in this Place. Let the Eye consume its tears. I am the Guide to the House of Him Who dwelleth in His Treasures.I travel on high, I tread upon the Firmament, I raise a flame with the lightning which mine eye hath made, and I fly forward towards the Splendours of the Glorified in the presence of the Sun, who daily giveth Life to every man who walketh about the habitations of the earth.
ruler is received at the hour of birth. It is a personification of the Symbol imprinted on the SAUU or Elemental body; and its action may be defined as that of Fate or Destiny. Its forces are drawn from the whole world, and it is established in the SAHU before the soul descends into generation. He says further:
" And when the soul has received Him as her leader the Daimon immediately presides over the soul, gives completion to its lives, and binds it to body when it descends. He likewise governs the common animal of the soul (the SAHU) and directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all out thought and reasonings. We also perform such things as he suggests to our intellect, and he continues to govern us till, through sacerdotal theurgy, we obtain a God for the inspective guardian and leader of the soul. For then the Daimon either yields or delivers his government to a more excellent nature, or is subjected to him as contributing to his guardianship, or in some other way is ministrant to him as to his Lord."
When this takes place, and the body, sealed by destiny, is made subject, by initiation, to the Divine Powers, it may well be symbolised by the Ka supporting the Baie on the portal of initiation. The Lower Self being sacrificed to the Higher Self. The Osiris Man is established, as in the symbols in which the Osiris is represented by the TAT or Symbol of Stability. Then, and then only, is the question .of Sacrifice for others to be considered. And the Osiris may plunge once again into matter; once again making use of his mummied form to seek and to save that which was lost.
Mild saintliness was by no means the ideal of the Egyptian Priesthood. Intense practical interest in the life of their country, and the ennobling of natural functions, drew a sharp contrast between them and the ascetics of India and Christendom. " Whatever your hand findeth to do, do it with your might," is a text that may well have come down to us from Ancient Egypt. The generative processes of Nature were honoured by them at special festivals-but at the same time the degradation of natural functions by excess was sternly reprimanded.
The Laws of Moses were to a great extent derived from the Laws of Ancient Egypt, and whatever else may be said of them they certainly tend to sanitary condi tions, and length of life, individual and racial.
Now we know that with the Jews Magic was prac tised in the Sanctuary, but denounced by the Priesthood; it was only when Saul found the Sacred Oracles of the Urim and Thummim deaf to his questions that he con sulted a mistress of the AUB or Astral Light.-I Samuel xxviii. v. 7.
So in Egypt we find side by side with the high Theurgic mysteries (of which a good idea may be formed from the writings of Iamblichus), a more mate rial development of Magical Art. At the Leyden Museum there is a large collection of magical formulae of late date; but the best specimen now at hand is the hieratic Papyrus of Harris probably dating back to the XVIIIth Dynasty. It contains twenty-two formulas which may be divided into three parts; the first including Songs addressed to Shu, to the Five Great Gods of Her mopolis, and to Ammon-Ra, of which I here give a trans lation, as follows:
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