Part 2: Ancient Egyptian Ritual
intro | history | ritual | temples | priesthood | religion | craftsmen | bibliography

To the major ancient Egyptian temple colleges, the elements of ritual were emphasized. A magician, priest/ess, magic worker at home would end up with several invocations to the four quarters, several closings, etc. The magician at home would have more of a recipe collection of ritual elements rather than a book of Shadows of complete rituals, and would have the know how of how to put them together. I personally have about 3,000 such recipes, from astral projection to zoomorphic projections, including blessings, opening and closing rites, spells, divination, consecration, initiation, weather, tantric, etc. The Pyramid Texts contain about 700 more, and the Coffin Texts, over 1,200 more.

To the Egyptian; The Way of the Ritual; it's chief god/dess to be invoked and the way the ritual is to be directed (weather magic for example) will determine which other ritual elements are used. Also remember that the Egyptians had generic ritual elements, usually blessings, consecrations and hymns. A generic hymn to a goddesses will have spaces in which the goddesses name, titles and some of her powers would be included. There were more than one set of god/desses for the four directions; and even the direction that you started your ritual changes with the orientation of the ritual.

For example; if you wanted to do a ritual for fertility of the land, you start off facing south the Life Giving Nile, then West to appease the desert, then North symbol of fertility, then the East rising sun, cosmic fertility, then back to South. Naturally if you are solar oriented using gods like Amon, Ra, Horus, and goddesses like Sekhmet or Bast, you started with the east and work your way clockwise.

Ritual Music
Egyptians used a 5 note scale, and had such instruments as lutes, pipes and flutes, drums, zills, tambourine, and sistra. The sistra or sistrum was the most magical instrument used, based on three horizontal metal bars with round metal clappers sliding on them.

These were used by women only, and only during ceremonies and ceremonial singing. We have made several reproductions, most don't sound very good. But I was able to "rattle" an original and it sounded wonderful. Something of a cross between a babbling brook and wind chimes. Developed by the Egyptians to help bring on trance states and whatever other emotional responses prior to and during ritual, it may very well have worked, especially with half a dozen or more going at once.

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