The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

MYSTERY OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

Khut, or “ Light ”—a name that not only indicates the real purpose for which it was raised astronomically, as a huge sundial or ‘“‘ beacon of reflections ” and from which is derived the word “ pyramid” (see p. 97, Witness of Great Pyramid, 2nd ed., for derivation), but which also reveals the meaning of its hidden allegory. For the very title of the opening chapter of the Ritual is ““ The Coming Forth into the Daylight ’’—or ‘“‘ Entrance on Light”, as Marsham Adams renders it—and it is this title which Sir Wallis Budge attaches to the whole collection rather than that given above.

Marsham Adams also states (Book of the Master, p. 143) that ‘‘in another ancient papyrus (we read) ‘the God of the Universe is in the ight above the firmament, and His symbols are upon the earth’ ”’, the significance of which with respect to the Great Pyramid will be appreciated when its true meaning and purpose are realized, particularly when we find almost identical references thereto in Scripture. Thus in Jeremiah we read: ‘“ The Mighty God, the Lord of Hosts . . . hast set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt,’ even unto this day (xxxii, 18-20 ; compare Isaiah, xix, 19-20).

The “ Light ” of the Ritual, however, was not the light of day, which the soul was quitting, but that of the unseen world renewed for ever in the splendour of Osiris. “ For the doctrine contained in these mystic writings was nothing else than an account of the path pursued by the just, when, the bonds of flesh being loosed, he passed through stage after stage of spiritual growth, until, initiated into the ‘ new birth ’! and illumined in the hidden life, he became

1 ‘*T am Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow; I have the power to be born a second time ... 1 am Lord of the men who are raised up .. .” Thus opens the sixty-fourth chapter—one of the oldest of any—of the Book of the Dead. Compare the words of John iii, 3-5 : “‘ Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”