symbolic representations of the personality in place for the ka to unite with Ra and reinvigorate life. Should the body rot away the coffin and in fact the very death shrouds or bands of cloth would act as the spare body. Now we are beginning to see the value of the Shroud, as the body of Jesus joined his father (Ra) leaving behind his personality infused with the energy of his ka. It is itself a baraka or Ark.
Ra himself as the personification of the sun of the one-Egyptian god is in essence wishing a reunification. This is described as the ‘greatest of mysteries’ by the ancient Egyptians and it occurs at precisely midnight – the middle hour, the in-between state. Ra in fact must reunite with his body by midnight in-order to be resurrected as the morning light of the sun. This is personified as the body of Osiris, who is the Underworld personification of the Egyptian one-god. You see, I tend to agree with the writer, Egyptologist and researcher, Alan Alford, that Egypt was a monotheistic culture, but that different personalities and aspects of the one god were given different, but meaningful, names. In the Underworld state, the ka and ba of Ra was Osiris and Osiris once reborn is Horus, who became Jesus in the Christian mysteries. These great acts of the deities are not just re-enactments of the sun, moon and stellar cycles, they are also deeply held esoteric truths and I am not alone in this statement:
“The mystical character of these ‘books’, in the sense of a codification of an esoteric and secret knowledge…” [1]
It is indeed a secret knowledge and one that has remained so for generations, so much so, that we still search for literal treasures, when we truly encompass them