Part 4: Ancient Egyptian Priesthood
intro | history | ritual | temples | priesthood | religion | craftsmen | bibliography

Priests & Priestesses
Becoming a priest/ess in ancient Egypt: Each family had their own family worship area, the size of which is wholly dependent upon the size of the house they lived in. Therefore, in each family, one family member acted as the family priest/ess. If the father or mother was a priest/ess, then he or she was the family religious leader, in charge of the family rituals. If the parents were not initiated priest/esses, then usually the elder son acted as the religious leader. And in some nomes (or states), matrilineal descent (through the female) was a tradition so the eldest daughter was the religious leader.

The only schools, which included most crafts, were taught in the temple colleges. A child would be sent to a college to learn a craft between the ages of 6-10. If the family had a tradition of priest/esses then usually the children would go to the temple college to be interviewed and tested for the priesthood. Exactly how the priest/esses at the college tested the would be initiate is not well known yet, but we do know that usually the following priests would be involved:

1. A Divine Scribe (reader and writer initiate)
2. A Prophet (who uses divination of some sort and inner visions)
3. A Purification Priest
4. A Priest of Anubis (or some other sort related to traveling in Egyptian heavens (astral plane directly related to Egyptian heavens).

Every Egyptian temple had 2 types of staff, a magical one and a working one consisting of the scribes, bakers and the every day parts of life. If the would be initiate was found wanting in the magical staff, called People of the Circle, the person might be sent back, taught a craft, or sent to the working temple.

Egyptian Philosophy, more really less like Voltaire and closer to ethics and conscious, was one of the first things that initiates were taught. Ethics and morals was the beginning of the training. A would be priest developed his own ethics or philosophy before embarking on to magical training. If one had to make a condensed version of all of the Egyptian ethics and philosophy teachings it would be; "Do anything you want, but only in moderation, and while doing so, do not harm anyone physically or psychology."

In the high magic section of ancient Egypt
In the temples to Gods the male priesthood predominated. Conversely in the temples to the Goddesses the female priesthood predominated, yet you still find male and females in both. Since many of the groups of gods in the cities were the triads of male, female, offspring, there were rituals to each separately, and rituals for both. Many times the god was worshipped in the day, the goddess at night, but of course, in Egypt, where many traditions did their own thing, sometimes it was reversed. In others, such as the city of Memphis, the female was the Sun, the male god was the moon or something else.

Magic and worship within the family and village.
All families had a family shrine. A family member who was initiated as a priest or priestess would preside over the shrine. If no family member was an initiate, the eldest son usually presided. Even to this there were many exceptions, in states where goddesses predominated, it was the eldest daughter. The orientation of the family life (farmer, sailor, trader, etc) determined the chief god/dess. A farmer's family usually had Osiris and Isis and co-partners; a healers, Sekhmet and Thoth.

Many families had dual shrines, with eldest son leading the god rituals and eldest daughter leading the goddess. God and goddess were considered essential, each predominate in their powers, but always complementing each other.

In villages, where there were no temples, then there were groups of interested people who belonged to a group, more formal than the family group, less formal than a temple, and headed by an initiated priest/ess. Hence, in a village where there may be four initiated people, there usually would be four groups. For example, in a suburb of Hermopolis state there was a male healer of Thoth, a female healer of Sekhmet, a priest of Thoth, and a Priestess of Isis. Hence, there was a healing group, a divination group, and a family group (Isis). Some people belonged to several groups. All groups worshiped other god/dess besides their chief one. During part of the year even in the group of Isis, Osiris had more emphasis.

For those who are really into goddess worship you will be pleased to know that the last operating temple of Egypt was the Temple of Isis at Philae before it was closed by the Christians in the late 5th/early 6th century, however people continued coming for 100 years later, despite the Islamic conquest over the Christians in Egypt during that century.

Initiation and Lesser Mysteries
The mysteries and initiations varied from temple to temple. In the Lesser Mysteries of Isis there is preparatory instruction, meditation within the temple and introduction to the sanctuary for participation in a performance of drama of death and resurrection. Initiations all contain the same demands in order to be successful today or in the ancient times: preparation of the group and the initiates, complete ceremonies and dedication to the purpose, and study and understanding.

Egypt allowed for self-initiation for some levels. All cognition, after all, comes from the inside. We are therefore initiated only by ourselves, the master or teacher gives us the Key. In some Egyptian initiations the goal is the receive the Sa, the innate virtue or power of the gods as a sort of fluid (or magnetic fluid or aura). It is transmitted by the God's (I will sometimes say God, but take it as either God or Goddess) hands through touch or passes on the neck or spine of the individual. This operation is called the Satapu-sa.

"The Summit is the Apex of the Mountains height, but there are both Summit and Valley, hence, something exists which causes both. Equally there is within you that which wants to lift itself despite the animal instincts, and also that which wants to remain earthly. Summit and Valley, are 2 powers manifested. If there were not these two there would be only one. Since there are two there are also all the others which sprang from these, the other Neters or Gods/desses."

"One should pass through complexity in order to exhaust the various possibilities until the awakening of the consciousness which leads towards simplicity; it is on intermediate phase between dream and reality."

"If the essence and perfection of all good are comprehended in the god/desses, and if you adhere to a more excellent nature, you will obtain a union with them, the contemplation of truth, and the possession of intellect. A knowledge of the gods is accompanied with a conversion to and knowledge of ourselves. Written on the college walls of the Temple of Horus at Edfu.

The Egyptian path, as defined by Frankfort, can be considered as;

Evolution = Ignorance
Destruction = Knowledge
Dissolution = Experience
Reintegration = Understanding
Integration = Wisdom.

Religion in the Late Period of Egypt
Egyptologists, The Church of the Eternal Source, and many Hermeticists agree that in the Late Period of ancient Egypt, the priesthood began forgetting the esoteric side of their religion, and started adopting bits and pieces of other religions, without the total integration that they practiced earlier. It resulted in a breakdown of usefulness in practicing magic, mumbling now meaningless phrases, and effectiveness in their magic and rituals.

Occult philosophy by these groups and many others maintain that the more powerful an object is based on the formula: # of people using it + # of years in use + the ability of the individual to use it + the correctness in its use. Feel a talisman that was made and used 4,000 years ago, it still has as more power than the modern work of most systems. In Jungian terms an old cultural symbol is more embedded in our subconscious as a universal symbol, and will be more powerful and last longer than a personal one.

The prevailing thought up to 10 years ago is that if a form and function of a god/dess has been worshipped for thousands of years by hundreds of thousands of individuals, including those properly initiated, then that form and function will always override what one individual or group over a few years may invoke. The thought form was constructed in the Astral plane and is extremely strong, and a few people who have decided that (usually through ignorance) he/she had a different form or function, will never be able to compete with the stronger form. Those who try to tap into an ancient thought form with a "modified" view of it frequently don't know what they are drawing from and instead of tapping the vast astral power it works against them or else their own power is all they tap into. Isis, for example, is never invoked as a Great Mother Goddess unless she is holding baby Horus. NEVER! I have seen many Wiccan ceremonies where they use the wrong Egyptian god/desses in their rituals, or the wrong god/desses forms for the powers they are invoking. Remember, that despite some current thinking that it's only the association in your mind that counts, don't, for example, invoke Sekhmet with a knife and envision a gentle mother goddess.

All rights reserved unless otherwise stated. Permission required for reproduction. Copyright 2006.
Send comments or questions to the webmistress. Blessings on your journey. Last Updated: