The Ancient Egyptian Dark Rite - Jon Eden Khan

"Osiris is a dark god".

These words were whispered into the ears of the initiate close to the climaxing point in what is described in the ancient texts as one of Ancient Egypt's highest initiations, the Dark Rite.

The focus of these mysteries was the revelation of the Great Dark Father of Ancient Egypt, Osiris.

In these mysteries Osiris was given the name, “Lord of the Perfecting Dark.”

This rite was said to “give perfection”.

This ritual is described in the Hermetica – the ancient texts attributed to the Ancient Egyptian god, Thoth – by Isis as having been passed down to her by a being called Kemaphis, who is said to have received it from Thoth himself.

It represents initiation into the Mysteries of the Father.

The ancient mysteries of the divine Father are profound, yet they remain mostly unknown and poorly understood by our culture today.

We’re used to a divine Father who dwells in the sky, transcendent, detached from his children, and feeling regularly moody about their behaviour.

The divine Father of the ancient mystery schools was a radically different force. Utterly transcendental, full of potency, presence, integrity, and profoundly earthly, s*xual, and phallic.

The Mysteries of the Father are ancient, and yet were mostly lost and went underground around 3000 years ago.

They relate to the Presence of indestructible Life that gave consent to sacrifice its transcendental freedom to descend and enter the tomb of incarnation knowing its essence can never be harmed.

They relate to a frequency of Life so utterly rested in its own nature that it was willing to be forgotten for aeons by its children, trusting that in time they will re-member their source, resurrect its power, and draw on it to serve on the planet.

They relate to the dismemberment and death of the One Self from its original state through its sacrifice into matter, which allows it to become the source of Life in the realm of those unawakened to its presence in their core.

Osiris after his dismemberment becomes King of the Dead in the underworld. In the Trans-Himalayan teachings, this is Sanat Kumara, who dwells at the core of the Earth, unknown to the majority of humanity save those initiates who at a certain point on the path awaken to his presence and resurrect his power, will, and life at the core of their being.

Awakening to this presence was a core piece of the advanced Ancient Egyptian mysteries. This relates to why they called Egypt the Black Land, which in the Hermetica is also linked with the black pupil of the eye and also the core of the heart:

“Egypt, the “sacred land” par excellence, was called Chemia or Chem (Ḥem), Black-land, because of the nature of its dark loamy soil; it was, moreover, in symbolic phraseology the black of the eye, that is, the pupil of the earth-eye, the stars and planets being regarded as the eyes of the gods. Egypt, then, was the eye and heart of the Earth; the Heavenly Nile poured its light-flood of wisdom through this dark of the eye, or made the land throb like a heart with the celestial life-currents.

Nor is the above quotation an unsupported statement of Plutarch’s, for in an ancient text from Edfu, we read: “Egypt (lit. the Black), which is so called after the eye of Osiris, for it is his pupil.”

This pupil, then, concludes Reitzenstein (p. 145), is the “mysterious black.” 

One translation of the name, Osiris, is, “Throne of the Eye”. For the ancient Egyptians, Osiris is the great dark Father who from his throne at the core of the Earth sees through the dark core of all beings, just as the great mother, Isis, clothes them with her body as an act of love. The “Black Land” of Egypt was also understood as made of the fertile darkness of Osiris, or his indestructible life.

It was his sacrifice, in descending into the tomb of matter to be the seed of Life at the core of the Earth and thus give life to all things, that the Ancient Egyptians represented in their rituals of Osiris.

And it was his resurrection – his full and true resurrection, beyond what occurred when Isis half-raised him to seed Horus – that was celebrated Ancient Egyptian Sed Festival, where at its culmination the initiate king would perform the “raising of the djed ritual”.

In this ritual, a strange object known as the “djed pillar” would be raised from laying on its side on the ground to being vertical.

This ritual was understood to ensure Ancient Egyptian society remained plugged into the sacred wellsprings of Life and divine Power for another year.

For a long time, many people did not understand this ritual. It remains mysterious and abstract for many Egyptologists even today.

The djed pillar is associated with Osiris, and seems to represent his spine, which was interpreted by those without the key to truly understanding the mystery here as representing stability, strength, and verticality.

On this basis many Egyptologists have assumed that the raising of the djed ritual was about ensuring another year of that ‘stability’ for Ancient Egyptian society.

Fair enough, as an explanation, if still a bit bland. And still not nearly as deep as the rabbit hole really goes.

The mystery is about understanding why the spine of Osiris was understood to be so connected to divine power, and why raising it ensured the kingdom stayed plugged in to divine Life.

The key is that Ancient Egyptians, like a number of other ancient cultures, understood that semen is created in the spine, with this having a deep connection to the ancient Mysteries of the Father.

In the process of descent, most versions of the divine Father somehow lose their phallic power.

Isis is able to recover all parts of Osiris’ body except the phallus. Attis castrates himself at the Tree of Life and bleeds out. Ouranus is castrated by Chronos…

The point is clear: as the divine principle of spirit comes into form it anchors itself at the core but loses its divine potency, leaving our world in a state of disconnection and halfwayness. Somewhere deep down, we all participate in Isis' grief for the loss of Osiris.

Now we start to understand the raising of the djed ritual.

The raising of the djed ritual was actually about the resurrection of the phallic power of the divine Father as the basis for true power in Ancient Egyptian society.

It was the initiate - representing the soul - remembering the divine Life of the Father at the core of their own being and of all beings, so it can rule alongside the all-embracing Goddess.

With the rise of the Abrahamic traditions during the age of Pisces the mysteries of the father were lost. They went underground. Osiris’ phallus was eaten by the fish.

With the dawn of the Aquarian Age the mysteries of the Father are returning. At their core, these mysteries are those of the resurrection.

The resurrection of the divine power of spirit in the heart of each initiate, with their black hole core penetrated by the phallic presence of the Great Father at the core of the Earth, and his living current of divine Life, Will, and Purpose.

That is the remembrance of power as an expression of the sacred wellsprings of Life itself.

The Avatara Level 2a retreat: The Dark Rite is dedicated to the return of these Mysteries.