Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: For this week I’ve selected two texts that lightly explore connections between the lore of the game and real world religion/mythology. In this expert, we find information about the alleged true meaning of mummification, at the very least for the mages of Egypt. The text goes on to relate the process to some fundamental aspects of the setting and how they might be interpreted by the people who inhabit it.
Egyptian burial rights, for the Egyptians, were a necessary step in maintaining the well being of the deceased person’s soul. Unlike our modern perceptions of burial, having more to do with reverence, respect and remembrance, for them it was a more pertinent matter of continual existence.
As, for the believing Egyptian, the body (khet, ẖt) needed to be present for the soul (sah, sꜥḥ) to be able to persist in the afterlife, it is no wonder their rituals blossomed to the extent they did. Many of them serving as tools for the betterment of one’s life after death or merely preserving one’s earthly possessions and status.
Now, thinking in terms of conventional religion, that is a strikingly distinct approach to the subject. But let’s instead look at this from the perspective of a mage’s interpretation of the soul, which, just a few years ago, was still the word most commonly used to describe the Einheit.
Of course, when the body, our Gestalt, dies, the Einheit begins dissipating, first degenerating to the perception of us in the minds of other people, and eventually sinking deeper to a range of lower ousia where it becomes incoherent. The body and memory preserve the soul. In this way, the ideas of this ancient religion find reflection in our knowledge of the other world.
Though it is always possible that, by the nature of our minds, we find patterns where there were none, these ideas may suggest bleedthrough from contemporary magical traditions. Such a focus on the soul also relates to what we know of the ancient practitioners of the region. Now, it’s important to remember, that the history of ancient Egypt spans a period of almost three thousand years, during which time we can see a diverse number of practices coming into prominence only to fade into obscurity a few centuries later. In the later years, we’ve also observed a significant influence from foreign practitioners.
Thus it is difficult to speak of the Egyptian school of magic, but we can, at the very least point to a chain of prominent interrelated traditions. From the unnamed secret cult of Memphis, to the House of Thoth from Khemenu, we see a focus on the matters of the soul.
We are not sure what the exact nature of many of these practices was, but some of them were clearly preserved to modern times, thanks to the Red Pyramid. The scope of their arts seemed to focus strongly on affecting the world through what we currently identify as manipulation of Karma, longevity through inducing physiological changes to the body and of course chasing the ever-illusive art of immortality.
A few legends even suggest that they were successful, but that is a separate matter, for a different time.
The focus on matters of the soul, the preservation of the soul and body both in the mundane practices of the time and the arcane practices of our ancient predecessors align too perfectly to ignore.
Esoteric Musings... 