Egyptian (ancient) Dream Beliefs

Dream interpretation links back to the ancient Egyptians with the first written record of dream interpretation around 1350 B.C. – although modern findings see it as much earlier.  This record was the Chester Beatty Papyrus. Chester Beatty papyrus is the oldest dream book in existence. The book portrayed images of what the dreams meant. Egyptians believed a god named Bes was responsible for their dreams.

Dreams were a very important, and indeed, sacred part of the Egyptian culture. The ancient Egyptians saw dreams as of utmost importance and had dream interpreters who were called “Masters of the Secret Things” who were temple priests. The priests were educated and most of their knowledge was taken from the “The Book of the Dead” – a book of Egyptian wisdom. In this system of belief Egyptians said that gods revealed themselves in dreams. They also saw that dreams gave warnings, advice, and prophecies.

Gods, from the point of view of dreams and from the cultural traditions of many other countries, believed gods exist. Even Christianity clearly mentions gods, even though it is denied. In Genesis it says “God said, “Let ‘us’ make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” As it says, “let US make man.”

The word Elohim is used in the original script of this piece and it means, to quote from The Unknown God by F. J. Mayers, “Elohim” is a plural name, and yet in our bibles it is always treated as a “singular” one, and always used with a singular verb. In this verse, Elohim, in using the phrase “in our image,” etc., treats Its self as a plurality.” So the unknown God – ain soph – in expressing Its self, becomes many. So there are many expressions of God. In one statement it calls this ‘The One in the many’. After all, God is beyond description and so can be a paradox.

When we meet in life things that have no form, like electricity or forces of nature such as gravity, an aspect or level of our mind often produces images or emotions as a way for us to have a sense of them, so we create images of gods to show the powerful natural influences that act upon us.

Gods are said in many ancient cultures to communicate to humans new ideas, ways of making things. We know the mind integrates separate information by forming it into wholes, into a gestalt, and this was most likely one of the ways they arrived at extraordinary perceptions and creativity. (Gestalt = something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts )

For instance, the Norse legend of how the weaving of flax was taught to humans by a goddess, is almost certainly a description of a waking dream experienced by the person who invented weaving. Unable to reason, but having already noticed the separate pieces of information, such as the flax growing, then rotting to reveal its fibres, the person’s unconscious formed a new gestalt, maybe with the help of seeing woven baskets. So the person, while awake, experienced a vivid ‘dream’ or image thought process, in which the new idea is expressed as a goddess showing point by point how to weave flax.

In the dream state we can often access what Carl Jung named the Collective Unconscious.  He saw our awareness like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water – waking self-awareness – there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is thought, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us.

For instance Edgar Cayce discovered in his adulthood, that he could put himself at will into the state of mind in which he could tap this unconscious reservoir of knowledge. Because he could diagnose people’s illness without examining them, his work was supported by doctors. Investigators of psychology and philosophy also sought him, and he dictated 14 million words while in this state of wider awareness. His findings suggest that we all have this ability to tap the wealth of unconscious information – truly a collective unconscious – but few of us can bring it to waking awareness. His biography, There is a River, and Seer Out of Season, are astonishing and inspiring books to read. See: Edgar Cayce.

The ancient Egyptians understood that in dreams, our eyes are opened. Their word for dream, rswt, is etymologically connected to the root meaning “to be awake”. It was written with a symbol representing an open eye.

The Egyptians also developed an advanced practice of conscious dream travel. Trained dreamers operated as seers, remote viewers and telepaths, advising on affairs of state and military strategy and providing a mental communications network between far-flung temples and administrative centers. They practiced shapeshifting, crossing time and space in the dream-bodies of birds and animals. See Archetype of the Shapeshifter

Through conscious dream travel, ancient Egypt’s “frequent flyers” explored the roads of the afterlife and the multidimensional universe. It was understood that true initiation and transformation takes place in a deeper reality accessible through the dream journey beyond the body. A rightful king must be able to travel between the worlds. In fact ancient people said sleep was the little death, for in the dream state and in death we have no physical body, but create images of one in our great  virtual reality. See Dimensions of Human Experience

In early times, in the heb sed festival, conducted in pharaoh’s thirtieth year, the king was required to journey beyond the body, and beyond death, to prove his worthiness to continue on the throne. Led by Anubis, pharaoh descended to the Underworld (the unconscious or dimensions of dreams and bodilessness – Bodyless Bodiless)

He was directed to enter death, “touch the four sides of the land”, become Osiris, and return in new garments – the robe and the spiritual body of transformation. Carol Zaleski, a prominent Harvard theologian, finds near-death experiences in Greek, Roman, Egyp­tian, and Near Eastern myths and legends. It is fascinated to read in her book, Otherworld Journeys, that some cultures see death as a journey whose final goal is the recovery of one’s true nature.

Jeremy Naydler’s Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts makes a convincing case that the palace tombs and pyramid texts of Egypt are about much, much more than funerary arrangements; that the Egyptians traveled beyond the gates of death while very much alive, not only to bring back first-hand knowledge of the afterlife, but to enter into sacred union with the gods and enthrone their power in the body, and so acquire the spiritual and sexual potency to marry the worlds. 

Melvin Morse, M.D., and Paul Perry in their book Closer to the Light, say that deep in a secret chamber a solemn group of men sought guidance from death. They dressed in white robes and chanted softly around a casket that is sealed with wax. One person is carefully counting to mark the time. After about eight minutes, the casket is opened, and the man who nearly suffocated inside is revived by the rush of fresh air. He tells the men around him what he saw. As he passed out from lack of oxygen, he saw a light that became brighter and larger as he sped to­ward it through a tunnel. From that light came a ra­diant person in white who delivered a message of eternal life.

This was the cult of Osiris, a small society of men who were the priests and pharaohs of ancient Egypt, one of the greatest civilizations in human his­tory. This account of how they inspired near death is an actual description of their rites from Egyptologists who have translated their hieroglyphics.

One of the most important Egyptian rituals involved the reenactment by their god-king of the myth of Osi­ris, the god who brought agriculture and civilization to the ancient Egyptians. He was the first king of Egypt who civilized his subjects and then traveled abroad to instruct others in the fine art of civilization. His ene­mies plotted against him. Upon his return to Egypt, he was captured and sealed in a chest. His eventual resurrection was seen as proof of life eternal.

Each new king was supposed to be a direct reincar­nation of Osiris. An important part of the ceremony was to re-enact his entombment. These rituals took place in the depths of the Great Pyramid and were a prerequisite for becoming a god-king. It is my guess that many slaves perished while the Egyptians exper­imented to find exactly how long a person could be sealed in an airtight container and survive.

Because the thought processes of the ancients were very different than occurs today, the ancient Egyptians were convinced that even their thoughts came from the core/central self, and the waking self was only a part of them, and not so important.

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A tiny coffin was found, in it was a fetus no older than 18 weeks of gestation.  By looking at how the child was buried, it shows archaeologists that even though the child was not born and did not live the life it was meant to live, the Egyptians still gave the little child an ancient ritual burial. Historians said that this particular burial shows them just how precious Egyptians believed life was, even if the child was never actually born.  The historians added that this gives them new insight into just how the Egyptians dealt with a miscarriage.

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Could the ancient Egyptians have been more precise than our current civilization?  The pyramids were found to point North, but not just the general direction of North. It points North within five hundredths of a degree to the true magnetic North. That’s more precise than the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

 The Royal Observatory, Greenwich sets the actual clock to GTC (Greenwich Mean Time or Prime Meridian Time.) and is whopping 13 degrees away from true North. It was created in 1675. If they couldn’t get true north just a few hundred years ago, what were the ancients doing? How accurate were the ancients clocks compared to ours.

Strange that these ancient people were so precise yet todays thinkers cannot accept the ancients view that we can exist after death.

See Touching Your Core Self. 

The dream guides of ancient Egypt knew that the dream journey may take the traveller to the stars – specifically to Sothis or Sirius, the “moist land” believed by Egyptian initiates to be the source of higher consciousness, the destination of advanced souls after death, and the home of higher beings who take a close interest in Earth matters.

When we look for ancient sources for all of this, we are challenged to decode fragmentary texts, some collated over many centuries by pious scribes who jumbled together material from different traditions and rival pantheons.  Wallis Budge complained (in Osiris) that “the Egyptian appears never to have relinquished any belief which he once had”. We won’t find what we need on the practice of ancient Egyptian dreaming in the fragmentary “dream books” that survive, any more than we’ll grasp what dreaming can be from the kind of dream dictionary you can buy in drugstores today.

We gaze in wonder at the Egyptian picture-books displaying the soul’s journeys and ordeals after death – and the many different aspects of soul energy that survive death – and quickly realize that to understand the source of such visions, and the accuracy of such maps, we must go into a deeper space. We must go to the Magic Library.

In Hellenistic times – the age of Cleopatra – dream schools flourished in the temples of Serapis, a god who melds the qualities of Osiris and Apis, the divine bull. From the 2nd century BCE we have papyri recording the dream diaries of Ptolemaios, who lived for many years in katoche, or sacred retreat, in the temple of Serapis at Memphis. A short biography of the dreamer has been published by the French scholar Michel Chauveau in his book Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra. Ptolemaios was the son of Macedonian colonists, but like ancient Egyptians he was called to the temple by a dream in which the god appeared to him. He seems to have lived for years as a full-time dreamer, whose dreams guided him not only in his spiritual practice but in handling family and business matters beyond the temple walls.

In this later period, the Egyptian priests who specialized in dreaming were called the Learned Ones of the Magic Library. What marvelous promise is in that phrase! What profound recognition of the magic and wisdom that is available to us through dreaming!

Example: Now I am experiencing going through the burial process of ancient Egypt. It is quite strange because I am both an observer and also the person going through the rite of death. I am seeing and experiencing the mummification process. I am not sure why but the word transubstantiation comes to mind. It is something I feel as the process is going on. As the substances are poured into my body I feel my being is transformed.

As I attempt to describe this I am reminded of what happened earlier with the incredibly fast vibrations that I felt were in some way changing my being. So this is again an experience of transformation. I sense it has a gradual refinement of the substance of my being. It is both a rite of death and a transformation of my being into a spirit, into a spirit being. As I write this I wonder if any of this translates into actual physical life. It is now two days after that journey and I do feel different in some way, but I feel that the process of transformation is still underway and I have to come back to it as a sort of meditation.

During my experience of this rite of death I understood that these rituals, but especially the meaning behind the rituals, have become a part of our unconscious. They are like a stratum, a level deep within us through which certain psychological, even physiological and spiritual growth processes still work. They are patterns that are still very powerful in us and our being used in some way to effect personal or spiritual growth. What I mean is that it might be very difficult for the deeper levels of our being too express or communicate to consciousness what is happening, what changes are occurring in us. Now these ancient rituals and ways of life are ready-made images and have great meaning for us, so are still relevant and powerful to us today.

Please look at these documentaries about ancient Egypt, they are full of new information: The Pyramid Code. Or if you cannot receive it there try this US one The Pyramid Code. Also see Winged Pharoah

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/10/dreaming-like-an-egyptian.html#ixzz25UkRBC3u From http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/10/dreaming-like-an-egyptian.html