Pharaoh

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Pharaoh (Old Egyptian: Per aa "great house") is a title for the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt that has been in use since the New Kingdom (1550 - 1070 B.C.; 18th - 20th Dynasty), but is rarely used in the official record. Originally it was used to refer to the royal palace; only since Thutmose III has it also been used to refer to the king himself. Only in the Coptic language is "pharaoh" the regular term for the king of Egypt.

The pharaoh was an initiate of the Egyptian mysteries, through whom the Egyptian folk soul could reveal itself.

„The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians aspired to something very special. Today, people can easily smile when they are told that the Pharaoh was a kind of initiate in a certain time, when they are told how the Egyptian stood by his Pharaoh, how he stood by his state institutions. For the European scholar of the present day, it is particularly ridiculous when the Pharaoh attached to himself the name "Son of Horus" or even "Horus". It seems strange to us today, doesn't it, how man can be worshipped as a god; one cannot imagine anything more abstruse. Today's people do not know the Pharaoh and his mission. We don't know what the Pharaoh's initiation really was. Today, we only see a people as a group of people that can be counted. A people is an insubstantial abstraction for today's man; reality is only a certain sum of people who fulfil a certain area. This is not the "people" for those who stand on the standpoint of occultism. Just as the finger as a single limb belongs to the whole body, so the individual people of the nation belong to a folk soul. They are, so to speak, embedded in it, only the folk soul is not physical, it is real only as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality: the initiate can converse with this soul. It is even much more real to him than the separate individualities of a people, much more real than a single human being. For the occultist, spiritual experiences also apply; there the folk soul is something quite real. Let us look schematically at the connection between the soul of the people and the individuals.

If we think of the individuals as small circles, the individual I's, then these are only individual beings for the outer physical observation. If we look at them spiritually, we see these individualities embedded as if in an ethereal mist, and that is the embodiment of the folk soul. Now the individual human being thinks, does, feels and wants something. He radiates his feelings and thoughts into the common folk soul. This is coloured by this radiation. Thus the folk soul is permeated by the thoughts and feelings of the individual people. And if we leave aside the physical human being and consider only his etheric body and astral body, and then consider the astral body of a whole people, then we see that the astral body of a whole people receives its shades of colour from the individual human beings.

The ancient Egyptian initiate knew this, but he knew something more. The ancient Egyptian asked himself when he looked at this folk substance: What actually lives in the folk soul? - What did he see in it? He saw the re-embodiment of Isis in his folk soul. He saw how she had once walked among the people themselves. Isis worked in the soul of the people. He saw in her the same effects as those emanating from the Moon: these forces worked in the folk soul. And that which the Egyptian saw as Osiris worked in the individual spiritual rays; in this he recognised the Osiris effect. But he saw Isis in this folk soul.

Osiris was therefore not visible to the physical plan. Osiris had died for the physical plan. Only when man had died was Osiris again placed before his eyes. This is why we read in the Egyptian Book of the Dead how the Egyptian felt that in death he would be united with Osiris, that he himself would become an Osiris. Osiris and Isis worked together in the state and in the individual human being as its members. Now let us look at the Pharaoh again and consider that this was a reality for him. The individual Pharaoh received instruction before initiation, so that he could not only understand it with his mind, but so that it became a truth, a reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself: If I want to govern the people, I must sacrifice a part of my spirituality, I must extinguish a part of my astral body, a part of my etheric body. The Osiris and Isis principles must work in me. I personally must not want anything: if I speak something, Osiris must speak; if I do something, Osiris must do it; if I move my hand, Isis and Osiris must work. I must represent the son of Isis and Osiris, Horus.

Initiation is not scholarship. But to be able to do something like that, to be able to sacrifice oneself like the Pharaoh, that is connected with initiation. For what he sacrificed of himself could be filled with parts of the folk soul. The part of himself that Pharaoh sacrificed gave him power. For justified power does not come about by elevating one's personality as one's own personality, but justified power comes about by taking into oneself that which transcends the limits of personality: a higher spiritual power. Pharaoh had taken into himself such a power, and it was represented outwardly by the Uraeus Serpent.“ (Lit.:GA 106, p. 166ff)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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