Ancient Egyptian Priestly Ritual for Sufi Meditation
Communicating with the divine assembly (nitro) in the ancient Egyptian religion was understood as a ritual to communicate with the cosmic forces, or in other words, religious activity and experiences had three dimensions: (worship, exact cosmic order, myth).
1- Abaya: Worship, including local ones, fell under the sanctification of (the deity of the region) or belonging to a deity more than others, according to the degree of awareness and spiritual perfection of the person, or the political (the religion/belief of the state in general) and the offerings and offerings that he made in the temples
2- The cosmic system: The precise cosmic system for the Egyptians was the “Giovani” (the appearance of the sacred); that is, it is the sacred space, which is the sacred space in the space in which the supreme and sacred deity is manifested through its phenomena, and it was a field for divine and religious action.
When the sacred space (the sacred world) intersects with our world, it appears in the form of ideal models (such as the actions and commandments of the gods or mythical heroes). Here all things become real through the imitation of these models, so the reality is its function to imitate the celestial archetype considered the original. Therefore, the Egyptians believed that everything on earth corresponds to its holy heavenly counterpart (as above as below), and for the material heaven, there is a holy sky. There is the holy land for the material earth, and the way the ancient Egyptian approached in portraying that land is ideal, it was named after “Heavenly Fields/Fields of Reeds/Fields of Yarrow” The heavenly fields were known for their trees and rivers.
The sacred space or sacred space in which the sacred divine entity is manifested was a field of divine action, which was described as supernatural phenomena or the paranormal. The mythical era was when the sacred entered our world and gave it form and meaning. One of the manifestations of the manifestation of the sacred entity is the establishment of world geography and thus becomes the legendary era that The founding of the universe is a sacred time, which is the only time of value to the traditional man, in the ancient view of the world the strength of a thing lies in its origin so that “knowing the origin of a being, animal, plant, etc. is equivalent to obtaining magical power, through Controlling the origin of something One can also control the thing itself. Here comes the role of religious practices and rituals to control everything supernatural
3- Myth: which means the sacred tradition of phenomena and supernatural works, which is “what is said about the god/gods, and about the divine presence (manifestations). It represents the cultural memory of peoples throughout the ages and as stipulated in the form of myths, names and other accumulated traditional forms.
These three dimensions are closely and inextricably linked. The three-dimensional nature of these dimensions can be known from ancient Egyptian sources, for example, a hymn to Osiris from the 18th dynasty, which explains the connection of these three aspects to each other. The hymn says: “Praise be to God, King of the gods, with many names, with Sacred incarnations and cult statues in temples.”
The concepts (with many names, sacred body, and cult figurines) refer to mythological, cosmic, and cult dimensions, and there are other such allusions to be counted.
In general, this concept of divine existence (god/holy divine entity) is somewhat less mentioned in ancient Egyptian theological texts. Compared to the implicit practice theology (reverence for nitro/reverence for the manifestations of God), on the one hand, reverence for a specific name or manifestation of God is tantamount to reverence for God himself – and there are many examples even in monotheistic religions. Or the photographer … etc. It is, therefore, an indirect mention of God himself.
It concludes from this that the practical practice for us at present by mentioning the attributes and names of God and worshipping Him with them brings us to the theory of the ancient Egyptian religion through the sanctification of God through the nitro (his manifestations), despite our quest for panting behind the theory of exclusionary monotheism in our religious practices. Still, we follow The same ancient Egyptian theoretical formulations in one way or another. This also applies to theology in the sense of religious practice, which is certainly more than a coincidence, except that its results are ignored or not fully acknowledged.
There is no reason to be surprised in this interpretation because, in divine affairs, there is other categories or dimensions present that indicates a structural relationship between the religion and beliefs of ancient Egypt and the Abrahamic religions. Still, the latter took the Bedouin approach in excluding religion from religion.
In the end, we agree or disagree with the previous proposition, but leave a question that requires comparing the Abrahamic religions with other ancient Egyptian religions in the hope that this current attempt to describe the concept of divine presence through the ancient Egyptian context with our modern beliefs will bring better results.
It seems to me that a comparative study at the theoretical level and practical practices in different religions will be possible and meaningful in terms of the concept of the divine presence and the historical dimension, specifically as the conceptual horizon of the divine and humanity.