A rare book explores Ancient Egypt

Nov 17, 2019 Book Review…, News

Book: Journey to Sacred Egypt
Author: Roger Calliste
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

With two decades of research in Egyptology, author and philosopher, Roger Calliste, has embarked on an ambitious undertaking.
In a compendium of evocative rites, orations and rituals that bridges epochs into a single spiritual experience, the author methodically sews together the most compelling pieces of Egyptian lore into a literary framework for modern times.
‘Sacred Egypt’ centres on the phenomenology of naturalism. Calliste’s dictation speaks to the wholeness and the interconnectedness that defines life, giving voice to the continuance of collective lives. In concise language and expression, his work celebrates all of life as an uninterrupted flow, a world without end and without a discernible beginning.
Man is a representation of nature, one with, and indivisible from the natural and celestial worlds. An unmistakable message Calliste delivers: we must strive for authentic unity, for healing in a seemingly binary existence. It follows that every item used in Egyptian rites and rituals embodies an aspect of man’s constitution.
In this rare find (circulated among his colleagues and students of the Egyptian mysteries), Calliste aptly opens with the rites performed by the sacerdotal class. He cautions against criticism that he might be divulging information to the uninitiated. He pens, “I believe that each person responds to sacred material at a level corresponding to their own spiritual awareness and therefore ultimately there is no betrayal of secrets.”
Measuredly, and with meticulous transliteration, he describes the attention accorded to each part of the human body, each part forming a corporeal gestalt, each a reflection of divinity.
The text is poetic and vividly imaginative, well reliving the spirit of that time.
Words come to life as the wise ones of Egypt follow their script with purposefulness.
Calliste leads the postulants through this ritual, one of many:

– Anoint the mouth and say – Uab Kua – meaning I become pure

– Anoint the hands and say – Ba Kua – meaning I become a soul

– Anoint the back of the neck and say and say – Djeser Kua meaning- I become a god

– Anoint the brow and say – Neter Kua meaning – I become divine

In the King’s Chamber, the Calliste details the theurgical rites performed including the offering of incense, an essential component that takes on elementally organic attributes. Upon offering incense, he recites:

‘Your fragrance comes to me, O incense

Let my fragrance come to you

Your aromas come to be, O gods

Let my aromas come to you…’

The hagiography surrounding the Temple of Seti and the Osireion will stir the imagination of mystics and Egyptologists.
Calliste writes, “In the mythos of Osiris and particularly with his dismemberment into fourteen pieces, the ancient sages averred that the head of the ancient god and teacher was interred in Abdyos, this making it the most venerated of nomes in the ancient land”.
It is in the Osireion that initiations were conducted and where the ancestors were elevated as ‘blessed’ and petitioned for abundance, enlightenment and protection.”
Of the fabled Egyptian Trinity, that has long captured the attention of historiographers, Calliste writes, “In the ancient myths, Isis is the sister/wife of Osiris who together with him rule Egypt…After Osiris’ death and dismemberment; we encounter the mourning of Isis as she travels along the length and breadth of the Two Lands in search of her husband. She finds him and with the aid of Anubis and her sister Nephthys revives him long enough to conceive the young hawk-headed Horus.”
‘Journey to Sacred Egypt’ could not be timelier. It speaks to acculturation, and to history as a breathing document. With Kemetic studies now part of the Afro-spiritual zeitgeist, and with rekindled interest in Ancient Egypt as the hub around which other civilizations emerged, Calliste handbook adds another layer to an ever-intriguing epistemological landscape.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Journey to Sacred Egypt by Roger Calliste
© 2019 Roger Calliste
Ratings: Highly recommended
Journey to Sacred Egypt is not available in bookstores.
For additional information email: glenvilleashby@mail.com

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