This, then, is the era remembered in the great myths and finds echoes in great fantasy literature, such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis. This fantasy literature represents a welling up into the present of a collective memory of this period when humans lived on the earth with giants, dragons, mermaids, centaurs, unicorns, fauns, satyrs. Legions of dwarves, sylphs, nymphs, dryads and other lesser spiritual beings served the gods and humans rubbed shoulders with them, fought battles with them and sometimes fell in love with them.
IN THE SECRET HISTORY, THE LAST CREATURES to incarnate before humans were the apes. They came about because some human spirits rushed into incarnation too early, before human anatomy had been perfected.
In the secret history, therefore, it is not right to say that humans are descended from apes, rather that apes represent a degeneration of humankind.
Of course none of the fabulous creatures have left any trace in the fossil record. So why have the great men and women of history who were initiates of the secret societies believed in them? Why should any intelligent person even begin to toy with the idea?
6. THE ASSASSINATION OF THE GREEN KING
Isis and Osiris • The Cave of the Skull • The Palladium
IN THE PERIOD DESCRIBED BY THE MYTHS of Olympus, gods walked among humans. But the history of the last god to rule as king of the earth is recorded in its fullest version in Egyptian rather than Greek tradition. The Egyptians unquestioningly believed that their most important god had once walked among them, led them into battle and ruled them wisely and well.
Herodotus described a visit to the shrine where Osiris was said to be buried. ‘Gigantic stone obelisks stand in the courtyard and there is a circular artificial lake next to it. It is on this lake at night that the Egyptians act out the Mysteries, the Black Rite that celebrates the death and resurrection of a being whose name I dare not speak. I know what goes on but… say no more.’
Fortunately we can supplement this teasing account with the history of Osiris as told by Herodotus’s near-contemporary Plutarch, an initiate priest of the Oracle at Delphi. In the following I have used Plutarch’s account as a basis, weaving in additional material from other sources…
We have to start by imagining a world at war, ravaged by roaming monsters and wild animals. Osiris was a great hunter, a ‘Beast Master’ — remembered as Orion the Hunter in Greek mythology and Herne the Hunter in Norse mythology — and a great warrior. He cleared the land of predatory beasts and defeated invading armies.
But this great warrior’s downfall came not in combat with monsters or on the battlefield, but because of the enemy within.
Returning from another military campaign, Osiris was welcomed back by cheering crowds, by the populace who loved him. The reign of Osiris, though constantly under attack from outside the country, would be remembered as a golden age. And it was an age of domestic as well as civil bliss. His name is connected with insemination, ‘ourien’ meaning semen, and what we today call the belt of Orion is a euphemism. In ancient times it was a penis that became erect as the new year progressed. These things should alert us to the fact that there is a strong sexual current in the history that follows.
Osiris accepted an invitation from his brother Seth to a gala dinner to celebrate victory.
Some said Osiris had been sleeping with beautiful dark-skinned Nepthys, wife of Seth and sister of his own wife, Isis. Did this provide Seth with a motive for murder? He may not have needed one. The clue to Seth’s animosity is contained in his name. He was an envoy of Satan.
After dinner Seth announced a game. He had made a beautiful chest, something like a coffin but fashioned out of cedar and inlaid with gold, silver, ivory and lapis lazuli. Whoever fitted most neatly into this chest, he said, could take it away.
One by one the guests tried but they were too fat, to thin, too tall, too short. Finally Osiris stepped in and lay down. ‘It fits!’ he cried. ‘Fits me like the skin I was born in!’
But his pleasure at winning was cut short as Seth slammed down the lid. Seth hammered in nails and filled every crack with molten lead — the metal of Satan. Then Seth and his followers carried the chest down to the banks of the Nile and cast it on the waters.
Osiris was an immortal, and Seth knew he couldn’t kill him, but he could, he believed, get rid of him for good.
The chest floated down the Nile for several days and nights, eventually washing ashore on the coast of what we now call Syria. A tender young tamarisk tree growing there wrapped the chest in its branches, and eventually grew all around it, enclosing it lovingly and protectively in its trunk. In time this tree became famous for its splendour, and the king of Syria had it chopped down and fashioned into a pillar that stood in the centre of his palace.
In the meantime Isis, separated from her man and deposed from her throne, cut her hair, blackened her face with cinders and wandered the surface of the earth, searching, tearfully, for her beloved husband. After a while she took a job as a servant girl at the court of a foreign king. (Readers will readily appreciate how this story, originally a sacred drama in the temples of Egypt, has come down to us in slightly garbled form as the pantomime Cinderella.)
But Isis never gave up hoping to find her man, and one day her magic powers led her to see Osiris clairvoyantly in the chest inside the tree in the middle of the very palace where she was working, the palace of the Syrian king. Isis revealed her true identity as a queen and persuaded the king to chop down the pillar and let her take the chest away.
She left by boat and landed on the island of Chemmis in the Nile delta. There she intended to use her magic arts to revive her husband.
But Seth had magic powers too. He and his evil cohorts were hunting by moonlight, and in a vision Seth suddenly saw Isis cradling Osiris. While she lay sleeping, he swooped down upon the loving couple.
Determined to make sure this time, he attacked Osiris with savage glee, hacking him into fourteen different pieces that he then had hidden in secret in different corners of the land.
So the widowed Isis had to set out on her travels again. (Freemasonic readers will perhaps be aware that they call themselves ‘Sons of the Widow’ partly as a mark of their participation in her quest.)
Isis wore seven veils to disguise herself from Seth’s minions and was aided by Nepthys. She also loved Osiris and now turned herself into a dog to help find and dig up the parcels of Osiris’s corpse. They retrieved all of them except the penis, which had been eaten by fish in the Nile.
They arrived at an island in Abydos in southern Egypt and there at night Isis and Nepthys bandaged all the remaining parts together using a long, winding piece of white linen.
The first mummy.
Finally, Isis fashioned a penis out of gold and attached it. She was not able to bring him wholly back to life, but she revived Osiris sexually so that she was able to hover, touching him gently and delicately as she enveloped his penis in the form of a bird until he ejaculated. In this way she impregnated herself on him, and in this same way Horus, the new Master of the Universe, was conceived.
Horus grew up to avenge his father’s death by killing his Uncle Seth. Osiris meanwhile lived in the Underworld as its king and Lord of the Dead. It is in this role that he was most often depicted by the Egyptians, usually with a green face, heavily swathed and apparently immobile, but emanating a power that is symbolized in his royal regalia, and carrying the crook and flail.