The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The “Chapter of Repulsing Serpents” follows, then the “Chapter of Driving Away Apshait.” The soul cries at the latter demon: “Depart from me, O thou who hast lips that gnaw.” In the “Chapter of Driving Back the Two Merti Goddesses” the soul declares its purpose, and protects itself by stating its claim to be the son of the father: “...I shine from the Sektet boat, I am Horus the son of Osi-ris, and I have come to see my father Osiris.” The “Chapter of Living by Air in the Underworld” and the “Chapter of Driving Back the Serpent Rerek in the Underworld” carry the hero still further along his way, and then comes the great proclamation of the “Chapter of Driving Away the Slaughterings Which Are Performed in the Underworld”:

My hair is the hair of Nu. My face is the face of the Disk. My eyes are the eyes of Hathor. My ears are the ears of Apuat. My nose is the nose of Khenti-khas. My lips are the lips of Anpu. My teeth are the teeth of Serget. My neck is the neck of the divine goddess Isis. My hands are the hands of Ba-neb-Tattu. My forearms are the forearms of Neith, the Lady of Sais. My backbone is the backbone of Suti. My phallus is the phallus of Osiris. My loins are the loins of the Lords of Kher-aba. My chest is the chest of the Mighty One of Terror.... There is no member of my body that is not the member of some God. The god Thoth shieldeth my body altogether, and I am Re day by day. I shall not be dragged back by the arms, and none shall lay violent hold upon my hands....

As in the much later Buddhist image of the Bodhisattva within whose nimbus stand five hundred transformed Buddhas, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, and each of these, in turn, by innumerable gods, so here, the soul comes to the fullness of its stature and power through assimilating the deities that formerly had been thought to be separate from and outside of it. They are projections of its own being; and as it returns to its true state they are all reassumed.

In the “Chapter of Snuffing the Air and of Having the Mastery over the Water of the Underworld,” the soul proclaims itself to be the guardian of the cosmic egg: “Hail, thou sycamore-tree of the goddess Nut! Grant thou to me of the water and of the air which dwell in thee. I embrace the throne which is in Hermopolis, and I watch and guard the egg of the Great Cackler. It groweth, I grow; it liveth, I live; it snuffeth the air, I snuff the air, I the Osiris N., in triumph.”

Figure 80. The Doubles of Ani and His Wife Drinking Water in the Other World (papyrus, Ptolemaic, Egypt, c. 240 b.c.)

There follow the “Chapter of Not Letting the Soul of a Man Be Taken from Him in the Underworld” and the “Chapter of Drinking Water in the Underworld and of Not Being Burnt by Fire,” and then we come to the great culmination — the “Chapter of Coming Forth by Day in the Underworld,” wherein the soul and the universal being are known to be one:

I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time; I am the divine hidden Soul who createth the gods, and who giveth sepulchral meals unto the denizens of the Underworld of Amentet and of Heaven. I am the rudder of the east, the possessor of two divine faces wherein his beams are seen. I am the lord of the men who are raised up; the lord who cometh forth out of darkness, and whose forms of existence are of the house wherein are the dead. Hail, ye two hawks who are perched upon your resting-places, who harken unto the things which are said by him, who guide the bier to the hidden place, who lead along Re, and who follow him into the uppermost place of the shrine which is in the celestial heights! Hail, lord of the shrine which standeth in the middle of the earth. He is I, and I am he, and Ptah hath covered his sky with crystal....

Thereafter, the soul may range the universe at will, as is shown in the “Chapter of Lifting Up the Feet and of Coming Forth upon the Earth,” the “Chapter of Journeying to Heliopolis and of Receiving a Throne Therein,” the “Chapter of a Man Transforming Himself into Whatever Form He Pleaseth,” the “Chapter of Entering into the Great House,” and the “Chapter of Going into the Presence of the Divine Sovereign Princes of Osiris.” The chapters of the so-called Negative Confession declare the moral purity of the man who has been redeemed: “I have not done iniquity....I have not robbed with violence....I have not done violence to any man....I have not committed theft....I have not slain man or woman....” The book concludes with addresses of praise of the gods, and then: the “Chapter of Living Nigh unto Re,” the “Chapter of Causing a Man to Come Back to See His House upon Earth,” the “Chapter of Making Perfect the Soul,” and the “Chapter of Sailing in the Great Sun-Boat of Re.”^[6] 2. End of the Macrocosm