Sky Religion in Ancient Egypt: Temples and Magick - Part I
“In the beginning Egypt was not”
The Sky Religion in Egypt: Its Antiquity and Effects by G A Wainwright; published in 1938, is one of the classic enabling texts of Egyptology, and I am going to use this name as a porte-manteau for this thread.
The sky religion is, in my opinion, one of humanity’s oldest spiritual impulses. Its roots lie back in the mists of time. Wherever human remains are found, it’s shown the sky religion was practiced. It begins with the simple observation of the sky, although nothing is ever simple. It might, by extension, encompass acts of reverence, an infinite number of attempts to replicate things seen in the sky here on Earth. Or, the recognition in the landscape, of patterns on earth that have been seen in the sky. This is possible because, metaphorically speaking, the earth and the sky were thought to have been once joined; the imprint of one is to be seen on the other.
The Books of Ancient Egypt
The Egyptians told this story in various Books of the Sky, the most famous of which is that of Nut or Nuit.
Nut, goddess of sky and heavenly bodies in Ancient Egypt. (Public Domain)
Of course when mentioning books, it may well evoke a certain idea in one’s mind, of an object printed on paper and sold in bookshops. Egyptian books, whilst sometimes written on papyrus or leather, were more often consisting of hieroglyphic texts and graphics carved in stone on the walls of sacred buildings. In a sense they were written in the environment, albeit a built one. Egyptian temples invariably contain several distinct books, arranged in panels on every available surface. One such book is that of Nut, the sky goddess.
Nut or Nuit was a sky goddess; Geb was the Earth god. This is a reversal of the commonest pattern of ancient thought, that of earth mother and sky father.
This is more than just a picture; it is a whole story, actually, a book.
