The Egyptian Tarot trump for the twenty-fourth path of Scorpio is Sokar XIII. Mars is the ruler of the sign of Scorpio; Uranus is also given here as Lord of the Kerubic signs. The esoteric title of the trump is Child of the Great Transformers: Lord of the Gates of Death.

Sokar is here depicted as a hawk-headed god, with black nemmys and white apron. He bears the was or Set-headed sceptre and the Ankh of Life. He is standing upon the hennu boat of the sun’s journey through the night and the underworld. The boat is shaped like a sledge with runners and was never intended to sail on water. It was built to be carried, and was said by some to be steered by the dead. The navigation took place among the stars, for the hennu boat is an astral vessel. The higher end of the sledge is fashioned in the shape of the head of an oryx, a species of desert antelope and the original type of the unicorn.[1] The hennu boat was in the charge of the high priest of Memphis called Ur-kherp-hem, ‘Great One of the Hammer’. The title is a reference to Ptah the cosmic creator god, with whom Sokar was identified.[2]

In the Tarot picture the boat’s runners rest upon an ark, which in turn rests upon the pure white mound of Sokar. Depictions of Sokar in the hennu boat sometimes show his hawk’s head only, while his body is completely covered in a white, luminous shroud. One may wish to note that Scorpio has three symbols: the snake, the scorpion (Scorpio) and the eagle. On the day of the festival of Sokar, the high priest raised up an ark or small wooden shrine at the moment of sunrise and placed it on the hennu boat. The shrine and hennu boat was then pulled along across the sands in a circular procession about the temple of the god, mirroring the revolution of the sun, planets or celestial bodies.[3] As always, one must remember that a true symbol does not represent earthly or even celestial things, but both point to metaphysical or principial truth.

The fiction writer Algernon Blackwood was able to convey some insights into the soul of Egypt, and of the vast expanse of the desert wilderness. In ‘Sand’, his writing was inspired by his experiences of the desert near Cairo.

Through this sand which was the wreck of countless geological ages, rushed life that was terrific and uplifting, too huge to include melancholy, too deep to betray itself in movement. Here was the stillness of eternity. Behind the spread grey masque of apparent death lay stores of accumulated life, ready to break forth at any point. In the Desert he felt himself absolutely royal.

And this contrast of Life, veiling itself in Death, was a contradiction that somehow intoxicated. The Desert exhilaration never left him. He was never alone. A companionship of millions went with him, and he felt the Desert close, as stars are close to one another, or grains of sand.

Power of Scorpio: Will and Word of Sokar

Sokar’s name is spelled in hieroglyphs at the top of the Tarot picture. It means ‘pure will’, or ‘word of power’. Sokar is sometimes shown adorned with the two plumes of Ma’at surmounting a solar crown. The plumes emphasise the True Will, or sacerdotal ordinance. The first hieroglyph of Sokar’s name is the sekhem wand or sceptre of power. The centre of the wand is a stylised form of the horned beast, usually a bull, indicative of the Ka. One may wish to note that Taurus, the Bull, is the opposite and complementary sign to that of Scorpio. The Ka is a vital reserve of strength required for the transformation of the soul into the eternally living Khu, the fabled phoenix bird, and which in turn reflects the radiance of the principial ‘star’, itself a symbol of both the human individuality and the supreme Atma, as it is called in Sanskrit.

Sokar is called the ‘Great God, he who came into being in the beginning, he who resteth upon darkness’. Sokar was ancient even when the Pyramids were built, as are his rites, if we view such a beginning in terms of time-bound consciousness. In metaphysical terms, that darkness is the primoridal or undifferentiated ground or ‘substance’, from which manifestation emerges. Sokar is also ‘Lord of the gates of the tomb’ as the opener of the sealed entrances to the labyrinthine Necropolis. Sokar is and has always been Lord of the Saqqara Necropolis near Memphis and Giza. In predynastic times, a labyrinth was dug out of the desert sands beneath the Saqqara complex. Finely fashioned, highly polished granite arks weighing upwards of 50 tons were placed in cavities there. The arks or vessels are cathodic, for they are polished like glass on the inside. There are no historical records of the builders of these impossible artefacts but they are thought by some to be the ‘old ones’ or ‘elders’ referred to in sacred texts, or their descendants.

The Great Old Ones is a term used in scriptures referring to an elder race that pre-existed that of the human, indistinguishable from gods. They are referred to in the book of Genesis as Nephilim or ‘giants’, the ‘men of renown’. Between Memphis and the Saqqara Necropolis was once a sacred acacia tree. One of the Egyptian names for Memphis is Ankh-Tawy, ‘Life of the Two Lands’. Thus the Tree of Eternity spreads its roots and branches between the worlds of the living and the dead. However, we should not be too hasty in drawing conclusions as to which world is that of the living and which is that of the dead.

Notes

From the forthcoming book and Egyptian Tarot deck.

1. The hieroglyphic determinative for ‘oryx’ is frequently mistaken for that of a goat. The Egyptian name is ma’au hetch, denoting the bright white colour of the Arabian species of oryx and the straightness (ma’at) of its horn. The Aramaic re’em is translated in the King James Bible as ‘unicorn’. The same word was translated into Greek as monokeros (μονοκερως) in the Septuagint. In Psalm 22: 21, the word karen, meaning ‘horn’, is written in the singular form. A legend has it that Noah strapped the long, sharp horns of the oryx to the Ark so the animals inside could breathe. Thus the tale of Noah’s Ark is not without antecedents as  true symbolism conveys the primordial wisdom.

2. Memphis was the location of the temple of Ptah in Lower Egypt, called by the Egyptians, Ankh Tawy, ‘Life of the Two Lands’.

3. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians Vol. I, pp. 504–505.

© Oliver St. John 2020, revised 2024

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The Egyptian Tarot trump for the twenty-second path of Libra is Maat VIII. Venus, the Glittering Splendour, is the ruler of the sign and Saturn is exalted therein.

Maat is here depicted as a young woman clothed in green and blue, the colours of the key scale of the twenty-second path. She has little in the way of ornamentation and is crowned with the flowering reed, which declares ‘Truth’, her name. She bears the ankh of life and lotus sceptre. She stands between the two pillars of dual manifestation, or Form and Force. In ritual magick these are also called Knowledge and Wisdom. They are shown here as silver and gold, indicative of the Moon and Sun as the governance of Spirit acting upon the Zodiac through the four classical elements of nature. Lotuses surmount the tetrahedronal caps of the pillars to show that all life pours forth from the power of dual manifestation.

The hieroglyphic name of Maat is shown at the top of the Tarot picture. The first letter is the sickle ma’a, ‘truth’. The two trumps for Leo and Libra are counterchanged on the Tree, as are the trumps for Aries and Aquarius. The straight edge hieroglyph confirms that Maat is the ‘Straight One’. The phonetic ‘t’ and goddess determinative complete the name.

The Neteru, which we call ‘gods’, are the personification of impersonal principles. Maat is the embodiment of truth and justice, natural law, balance or equilibrium. Hence Justice is the traditional title of the 8th Tarot Atu, while Daughter of the Lords of Truth: Ruler of the Balance is the esoteric title. Maat is the goddess of the scales of the balance. She is the mistress of creation and destruction and the balance of light and darkness. She is the regulator of the stars and the seasons, the ‘times’. She is immutable cosmic law and the law of nature. Thus Saturn is the (Shakti) power behind Venus, the principle of love or union.

The Rituals of Maat

The Sun enters Libra at the autumnal equinox and balance of the year, when days and nights are equal in length. It is the gate of winter. In the southern hemisphere of the globe this is reversed and the vernal equinox heralds the gate of summer. At the ceremony of the equinox, the officers sound four threefold knocks, twelve in all, as they declare in turn,

Black and White!
Day and Night!
North and South!
East and West!
The Equinox of the Gods is here![1]

All ritual magick comes under the auspices of Maat. Everything in a temple must be balanced and harmonious. Likewise, the mind itself is set straight, purified by study, the essential discipline of the path of knowledge. In Maat all things are made equal and harmonious. According to a papyrus dating from the Middle Kingdom, she declares,

I have given bread to the hungry and clothed the naked.
I was a husband to the widow and father to the orphan.[2]

Everything concerned with Maat is double and so it is with all of nature. There is no ‘one-alone’ in truth. The power of Egyptian magical spells is in the words. To know they are true, and to speak them truly, is the perfection of Maat. As the daughter of Ra, Maat makes order from chaos by overcoming her counterpart Isfet, literally ‘unbalance’. She thus makes it possible for Ra to come forth from the primordial mound. Maat presides over the Hall of Neophytes or Hall of Dual Manifestation. In the ritual of the initiation of a Neophyte it is declared of the pillars,

Knowledge and Wisdom, their two-fold Might,
Rolling asunder Darkness and Night.[3]

Maat is the absolute rule of cosmic law, as was clearly set forth in the Pyramid Texts dated to more than 4000 years ago.[4] At a later time, all goddesses were paired with male gods. Maat is most often paired with Tahuti, known by the Greeks as Hermes-Thoth and to the Romans as Mercury. Notably, the twenty-second path of Libra on the Tree of Life mirrors the twentieth path of Virgo ruled by Mercury. The addition of the paths gives 42, the number of the Assessors in the Hall of Maat. Tahuti himself is frequently described as the ‘One who reveals Maat’ or the ‘One who loves Maat’. To love Maat, to perform true actions and to speak true words, is to receive Maat. A word must be heard before it can be uttered.

Daughter of the Lords of Truth

The twenty-second path of the Tree of Life connects Geburah, the sphere of Mars, with Tiphereth, the sphere of the Sun. The path is called the Faithful Intelligence, and it is said that this path increases the spiritual powers. Furthermore, it is said, “all dwellers on earth are under its shadow”.[5] The path conveys the spiritual strength and power to realise every thought, word and deed as the expression of the light of God. This requires the practice of discrimination essential to yoga.

The practitioner must not confuse the personal will, prone as it is to conditions and modifications, with the True Will, which is perfectly free from all conditions since it is the unseen cause of all conditions.

The magical powers of the twenty-second path are Works of Justice and Equilibrium. The yoga practitioner must maintain constant vigil. The stilling of thought (dharana) is essential before true meditation (dhyana) can be achieved, let alone Samadhi (union with God or the Absoute).

Notes

From the forthcoming book and Egyptian Tarot deck.

1. From ‘Ritual for Sun entering Libra’, Ritual Magick—Initition of the Star and Snake [Ordo Astri].

2. James P. Allen, p. 116, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. One should beware of superimposing a modern socialistic or moral interpretation on such ancient texts, as some will do that are unable to understand symbolism.

3. From ‘Liber 930’, The Phoenix and other Stellar Rites of Initiation [Ordo Astri].

4. The Pyramid Texts of Unas are currently dated to around 2375–2345. Their source is thought to be far more ancient even than that.

5. Sepher Yetzirah. For commentaries on these ancient texts on the thirty-two paths, see Thirty-two paths of Wisdom [Ordo Astri books].

© Oliver St. John 2020, revised 2024

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