.....to me belonged the universe before you gods had come into being. You have come afterwards because I am Heka.All religions have a magical aspect, ancient religions like the Egyptian, according to which all of creation was animated to some extent, perhaps more so than many others. Through magic the creation had come into being and was sustained. Thus, magic was more ancient, and consequently more powerful, than the gods themselves.
It was also the extraordinary means for acquiring knowledge about one's surroundings - above all the hidden parts of them - and gaining control over them. Gods, demons and the dead could be implored, cajoled or threatened. Their help could be enlisted to avert evil or achieve one's desires.
Egyptian magical thinking continued to influence Europe. Thoth, god of wisdom and learning, was identified with the Greek Hermes Trismegistus. He was thought by the Hermetists to have originated the Hermetica, 42 books of magic
While its efficiency in the hands of mortal practitioners was perhaps often less than had been hoped for, magic attracted people because it was practical and made sense. Everything had a reason, often hidden to the ordinary person, but revealed to the knowledgeable. Magic explained the relationships between causes and effects using ideas people could relate to. Analogies and symbolisms were widely used, the sympathetic principle of like affecting like was invoked, associations, be they pure coincidence, were imbued with meaning, and historic occurrences became predictors for the future. There were even prescribed ways for explaining why expected results had not materialized.
It appears that, originally, the Egyptians, like some other peoples who practiced ritual cannibalism, thought that spiritual powers resided in the body and could be acquired by ingestion. There is no evidence, though, that such a view was more than speculative and ever acted upon. Magic was tightly bound up with writing, although there must have been an extensive purely oral tradition which was never recorded and is therefore lost to us. Most practitioners gained magical knowledge by studying ancient scriptures. Chief among them were the lector-priests, the only clerics who were fully professional since the beginning of recorded history. They were the keepers of the sacred books.
Magical knowledge and power emanated from the gods and was bestowed upon their servants, the kings ... and their substitutes in the service of the gods, the priesthood. But there were also less exalted magicians who did not deal with life and death, but with more mundane issues like good luck charms, pest control or love potions. Sometimes spells fell into the wrong hands. Anybody capable of reading could use them, and, at times, some did so with evil intentions. To the ordinary mortal magic could be dangerous, and coming into physical contact with the divine deadly. The accidental touching of the royal sceptre even by a sem priest had to be counteracted by the king's spell.
The acquisition of knowledge concerning spiritual beings or the future enhanced a person's control over his destiny. One path to such knowledge was the interpretation of dreams, which was also used for justifying one's actions or legitimizing one's power. The power attained through magic could serve many purposes, good or evil. It could be used to manipulate people's behaviour or feelings as the many love-spells prove. There was no tradition of magic that was evil in itself, what we would refer to as Black Magic, but magic could be abused and was in these instances treated as criminal behaviour, though possibly especially abhorrent.
I am one with Atum when he still floated alone in Nun, the waters of chaos, before any of his strength had gone into creating the cosmos. I am Atum at his most inexhaustible - the potence and potential of all that is to be. This is my magic protection and it's older and greater than all the gods together!
Source: nefertiti.iwebland.com
