Carl Sagan got it right: If True-Believers could - for a moment - understand the Cosmos as it now appears to Science they would squirm at how puny were the Religious gods in comparison. Julian Baggini, in his book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction writes: "What most atheists do believe is that altogether there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical, out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values - in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life." Dawkins points out the obvious: anything currently unexplainable in the natural world will one day yield its secrets and join what is explainable. "As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful."

That's Ma'at above - in all her winged glory. Maat is the perfect example of the Apotheosis of a Concept. Many of the Etics dismiss Maat as a minor goddess of Cosmic Order. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maat is the Glial Cell structure of the Universe. Without Maat the gods of Chaos - like Nun - would regain reality. Maat is to Egypt what Li, Qi, and Shu are to China. Maat is to Egypt what the Dharma is to Zen. Maat is a rendition of the Order and the Patterns which govern the Universe and everything which happens within it. Maat is Logos. There's a lot of Jesus in Maat and hell, if you could scour the christian patina which has obscured Jesus and see the lad whole and bright and new - you would probably decide that Jesus and Maat were Typological Twins.

It is absolutely true that "Egypt is the gift of the Nile." But it's a left-handed gift. It's a gift which constrains and limits as much as it waters and cools. The Nile is actually the gift of snowmelt in mountain ranges so deep into Africa that no Egyptian ever saw them or noted them as the Source. Snowmelt is the gift of Seasons. Seasons are the gift of the Earth's Orbital Wobble. The Wobble is the gift of Gravities. And Gravity is the gift of the beginning. Which itself was the gift of a Fluctuation in the Void - The Buddha once described it as a Fart in the Bath. Suddenly the Nothing went Kenotic and everything else is the gift of that.

Humans are not at liberty to choose their metaphors. Every Symbol System is hewn from local Ecology. The Pygmies have no Sea Gods. They've never seen the sea. It has been pointed out that Sun Gods as Father Figures have the personality of their Latitude. The Sun along the equator can be a cruel and harsh dude. Along the 45th Parallel he gets a lot friendlier and a lot more welcome. It's that way with Rain too - when you make Rain a god. So all Cosmology will be the product in metaphor of the way the tribe relates to its Ecosystem Dynamics. Desert people will always be harsh in their judgments. Island people stay in touch with the female part of their cosmos long after the mainland has gone patriarchal and linear. Spengler believed that every Religion was the product of a distinct Culture and that Culture was a translation into Art of the Necessities of the Land.

Ma'at is an expression of those Necessities. She is Truth. She is Balance. On good days, she is Justice. So Maat is an expression of the Cosmic Tune in Key - She is Harmony. If Maat wobbled - for a moment - the Cosmos would collapse into a Wolf 5th screamed across the cold nothingness as the Group-Synapse faltered and flickered out. God would go back to his cold Monad - as his ejaculate dissolved back into protohadronic nuclei with no shells. Poof! And like Keyser Söze - everything would disappear.

That blue object in the left hand of the Rebis is a Carpenter's Square, it's a Rule, it's an instrument of measurement - what the Greeks called a 'Canon' [Kanwn]. It is used to make things Straight. In the Hieroglyphics used to make Maat's name is an object identified as a 'cubit' or the tool used to measure a cubit. Now it has become the pedestal the goddess stands upon. Get it? The ancients, like Skippy, were descriptive, not deep. So Maat is a conception of order based on our ability to measure and judge what order and stability should be like. The modern usage of the Greek 'Canon' is a Rule or a Principle by which our lives are kept "straight" and governed. That's the 'Old Dragon' the Rebis stands upon in the Alchemical emblem left. The entire known Universe is pictured in the emblem - all governed by a pattern, an order, a harmony of rules - Ma'at.
Ma'at has a consort, a hubby, a male counterpart: Thoth. Both Maat and Thoth use a Feather as their Attribute. Thoth is the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury, or the feathery dude the christians call the Holy Ghost. Logos-Spermatikos. Thoth is an Ibis-Headed god who teaches man Reading/Writing - the use of letters, signs, sigils and symbols. He teaches Isis and Osiris about the Secret of the Seed - which is Sex - and therefore he is the originator of Agriculture and Fornication. In the Garden his form is a Serpent. As the gods of Consciousness and Logic, Reason and Order, Maat/Thoth - twinned, like the Rebis above - are personifications of Gnosis both practical and magical. It is Maat who guides the Sun-Ra and keeps him on his daily, monthly, seasonally, yearly course. Thoth and his Female half Maat measured and wrote down and therefore rule and make straight the movements of Ra and the Moon and the Decans and the Nile . . . when you die she will meet you at the Balance and will weigh your soul against the weight of her Feather. If your soul - in its voyage with your earthly body - got fatter than god's intentions, his rules, principles & order - then it will be cast into the abyss. Which abyss lives in the belly of Leviathan - always lurking nearby, around the Balance.

"Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense; by calling 'God' some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves, they pose as deists, as believers, before the world; they may even pride themselves on having attained a higher and purer idea of God, although their God is nothing but an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrine." Sigmund 'Zig-Zig' Freud wrote that in his book: The Future of an Illusion.

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