1.
Equinox
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An equinox is the moment in which the plane of Earths equator passes through the center of the Sun, which occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. On an equinox, day and night are of equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, due to the size of the sun. To avoid this ambiguity, the word equilux is sometimes used to mean a day in which the durations of light, see Length of equinoctial day and night for further discussion. The word is derived from the Latin aequinoctium, aequus and nox, the equinoxes are the only times when the solar terminator is perpendicular to the equator. As a result, the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated, the word comes from Latin equi or equal and nox meaning night. In other words, the equinoxes are the times when the subsolar point is on the equator. The subsolar point crosses the equator moving northward at the March equinox, the equinoxes, along with solstices, are directly related to the seasons of the year. In the southern hemisphere, the equinox occurs in September. When Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar in 45 BC, he set 25 March as the date of the spring equinox. Because the Julian year is longer than the tropical year. By 1500 AD, it had drifted backwards to 11 March and this drift induced Pope Gregory XIII to create a modern Gregorian calendar. However, the leap year intervals in his calendar were not smooth and this causes the equinox to oscillate by about 53 hours around its mean position. This in turn raised the possibility that it could fall on 22 March, the astronomers chose the appropriate number of days to omit so that the equinox would swing from 19 to 21 March but never fall on the 22nd. Vernal equinox and Autumnal equinox, these names are direct derivatives of Latin. The equivalent common language English terms spring equinox and autumn equinox are even more ambiguous, March equinox and September equinox, names referring to the months of the year they occur, with no ambiguity as to which hemisphere is the context. They are still not universal, however, as not all use a solar-based calendar where the equinoxes occur every year in the same month. Northward equinox and southward equinox, names referring to the apparent direction of motion of the Sun
2.
Aleister Crowley
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Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century, a prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Born to a wealthy Plymouth Brethren family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, in 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should Do what thou wilt, in 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded a Thelemite order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated the religion. Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia, and North America, in 1920 he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and he divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and he was denounced in the popular press as the wickedest man in the world and a Satanist. Crowley has remained an influential figure over Western esotericism and the counter-culture. In 2002, a BBC poll ranked him as the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time, Crowley was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley, was trained as an engineer and his mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, came from a Devonshire-Somerset family and had a strained relationship with her son, she described him as the Beast, a name that he revelled in. The couple had married at Londons Kensington Registry Office in November 1874. Crowleys father was particularly devout, spending his time as a preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife. Following the death of their daughter in 1880, in 1881 the Crowleys moved to Redhill. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to H. T, habershons evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to Ebor preparatory school in Cambridge, run by the Reverend Henry dArcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist. In March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer, Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained an admiration of his father, describing him as his hero and his friend. Inheriting a third of his fathers wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was punished by Champney
3.
Hashish
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Hash is an extracted cannabis product composed of compressed or purified preparations of stalked resin glands, called trichomes, from the plant. This all depends on the process and amount of solvent left over, the name comes from the Arabic word which means grass. It is believed that massive hashish production for international trade originated in Morocco during the 1960s, before the coming of the first hippies from the Hippie Hashish Trail, only small pieces of Lebanese hashish were found in Morocco. In 1596, Dutchman Jan Huyghen van Linschoten spent three pages on Bangue in his work documenting his journeys in the East. He particularly mentioned the Egyptian Hashish and he said, Bangue is likewise much used in Turkie and Egypt, and is made in three sorts, having also three names. In the 1800s, hashish was embraced in some European literary circles, baudelaire later wrote the 1860 book Les paradis artificiels, about the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish. At around the time, American author Fitz Hugh Ludlow wrote the 1857 book The Hasheesh Eater about his youthful experiences. Hashish can be consumed by oral ingestion or smoking, typically in a pipe, vaporizer or joints, Hashish is made from cannabinoid-rich glandular hairs known as trichomes, as well as varying amounts of cannabis flower and leaf fragments. The flowers of a female plant contain the most trichomes. Certain strains of cannabis are cultivated specifically for their ability to produce amounts of trichomes. The resin reservoirs of the trichomes, sometimes erroneously called pollen, are separated from the plant through various methods, mechanical separation methods use physical action to remove the trichomes from the plant, such as sieving through a screen by hand or in motorized tumblers. This technique is known as drysifting, the resulting powder, referred to as kief or drysift, is compressed with the aid of heat into blocks of hashish, if pure, the kief will become gooey and pliable. When a high level of pure THC is present, the end product will be almost transparent, ice-water separation is another mechanical method of isolating trichomes. Newer techniques have developed such as heat and pressure separations. Trichomes may break away from supporting stalks and leaves when plant material becomes brittle at low temperatures, the ice-water method requires ice, water, agitation, filtration bags with various-sized screens and plant material. With the ice-water extraction method the resin becomes hard and brittle and this allows large quantities of pure resins to be extracted in a very clean process without the use of solvents, making for a more purified hashish. Chemical separation methods use a solvent such as ethanol, butane or hexane to dissolve the lipophilic desirable resin. Remaining plant materials are filtered out of the solution and sent to the compost, the solvent is then evaporated, or boiled off leaving behind the desirable resins, called honey oil, hash oil, or just oil
4.
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published stories, as well as successful plays, novels. He is best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elflands Daughter and he achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Irelands longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis, from a historically wealthy and famous family, Dunsany was related to many well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh and he was also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist, Home Rule politician the Hon. Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett PC, KCVO, FRS, DL, JP and George Noble Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett and his mother was a cousin of Sir Richard Burton, and he inherited from her considerable height, being 64. Plunketts only sibling, a brother, from whom he was later estranged, was the noted British naval officer. Edward Plunkett grew up at the properties, most notably Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent and Dunsany Castle in County Meath. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton College and finally the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, the title passed to him at his fathers death at a fairly young age, in 1899, and Dunsany returned to Dunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901. In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers, youngest daughter of the 7th Earl of Jersey, living at Osterley Park and their only child, Randal, was born in 1906. The Dunsanys were socially active in both Dublin and London, and travelled between their homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during World Wars I and II, and the Irish War of Independence. He was friendly with, for example, George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty and, for a time, Dunsany was a keen hunter and sportsman, and was at one time the pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He enjoyed cricket, provided the local cricket ground situated near Dunsany Crossroads and he was president of both the Irish Chess Union and the Kent County Chess Association for some years, and of Sevenoaks Chess Club for 54 years. Dunsany campaigned for animal rights, being known especially for his opposition to the docking of dogs tails and he was a supporter of Scouting over many years, serving as President of the Sevenoaks district Boy Scouts Association. He also supported the drama group, the Shoreham Players. Dunsany provided support for the British Legion in both Ireland and Kent, including grounds in Trim and poetry for the Irish branchs annual memorial service on a number of occasions, Dunsanys fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings, and he was involved with the Irish Literary Revival
5.
Charles Baudelaire
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Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal, expresses the nature of beauty in modern. Baudelaires highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud. He is credited with coining the term modernity to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in a metropolis. This obsessive idea is all a child of giant cities. Baudelaire is one of the innovators in French literature. He made Paris the subject of modern poetry and he would bring the citys details to life in the eyes and hearts of his readers. Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, on April 9,1821 and his father, François Baudelaire, a senior civil servant and amateur artist, was 34 years older than Baudelaires mother, Caroline. François died during Baudelaires childhood, in 1827, the following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick, who later became a French ambassador to various noble courts. He stated in a letter to her that, There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you, Baudelaire regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner. Baudelaire was educated in Lyon, where he boarded, Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to idleness. Later, he attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law and he began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He also began to run up debts, mostly for clothes, upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother I dont feel I have a vocation for anything. His stepfather had in mind a career in law or diplomacy and his mother later recalled, Oh, what grief. If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have very different. He would not have left a name in literature, it is true and his stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India, in 1841 in the hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, on returning to the taverns of Paris, he began to compose some of the poems of Les Fleurs du Mal. At 21, he received an inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years
6.
W. B. Yeats
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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London and he spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeatss debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, from 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, in 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Of Anglo-Irish descent, William Butler Yeats was born at Sandymount in County Dublin and his father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter who died in 1712. Benjamin Yeats, Jerviss grandson and Williams great-great-grandfather, had in 1773 married Mary Butler of a family in County Kildare. Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler in the family name, Mary was a descendant of the Butler of Ormond family from the Neigham Gowran branch of the family. They were descendants of the first Earls of Ormond, by his marriage, Williams father John Yeats was studying law but abandoned his studies to study art at Heatherleys Art School in London. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a merchant family in Sligo. Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleons dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty is manifestly true of W. B. Y. Yeatss childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy, the 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement, the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had an effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his countrys biography. In 1867, the moved to England to aid their father, John. At first the Yeats children were educated at home and their mother entertained them with stories and Irish folktales. John provided an education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside
7.
John Dee
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John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and he was also an advocate of Englands imperial expansion. Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable, one of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on the geometry of Euclid at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and an astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation. Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology, in his lifetime, Dee amassed one of the largest libraries in England. His high status as a scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics and he served as an occasional advisor and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her ministers Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. Dee also tutored and enjoyed patronage relationships with Sir Philip Sidney, his uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and he also enjoyed patronage from Sir Christopher Hatton. Dee was born in Tower Ward, London, to Rowland Dee of Welsh descent and his surname Dee derived from the Welsh du, his grandfather was Bedo Ddu of Nant-y-groes, Pilleth, Radnorshire, and John retained his connection with the locality. His father Roland was a mercer and gentleman courtier to Henry VIII, John Dee claimed to be a descendant of Rhodri the Great, Prince of Wales and constructed a pedigree showing his descent from Rhodri. Dees family arrived in London in the wake of Henry Tudors coronation as Henry VII, Jane Dee was the daughter of William Wild. Dee attended the Chelmsford Chantry School from 1535 to 1542 and he entered St Johns College, Cambridge, in November 1542, aged 15, graduating BA in 1545 or early 1546. His abilities recognised, he became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. At Trinity, the stage effects he produced for a production of Aristophanes Peace procured him the reputation of being a magician that clung to him through life. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled in Europe, studying at Louvain and Brussels, in 1552, he met Gerolamo Cardano in London, during their acquaintance they investigated a perpetual motion machine as well as a gem purported to have magical properties. Rector at Upton-upon-Severn from 1553, Dee was offered a readership in mathematics at Oxford in 1554, in 1555, Dee became a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through the companys system of patrimony. That same year,1555, he was arrested and charged with calculating for having cast horoscopes of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth, Dee appeared in the Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to the Catholic Bishop Bonner for religious examination. His strong and lifelong penchant for secrecy perhaps worsening matters, this episode was only the most dramatic in a series of attacks. Clearing his name yet again, he became a close associate of Bonner
8.
Baphomet
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It appeared as a term for a pagan idol in trial transcripts of the Inquisition of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century. The name first came into popular English usage in the 19th century, with debate, since 1856, the name Baphomet has been associated with a Sabbatic Goat image drawn by Eliphas Levi which contains binary elements representing the sum total of the universe. The name Baphomet appeared in July 1098 in a letter by the crusader Anselm of Ribemont, A chronicler of the First Crusade, Raymond of Aguilers, the name Bafometz later appeared around 1195 in the Occitan poems Senhors, per los nostres peccatz by the troubadour Gavaudan. Around 1250 a poem bewailing the defeat of the Seventh Crusade by Austorc dAorlhac refers to Bafomet. De Bafomet is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llulls earliest known work, over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars. Yet Malcolm Barber observes that historians find it difficult to accept that an affair of such enormity rests upon total fabrication, similarly Michael Haag suggests that the simulated worship of Baphomet did indeed form part of a Templar initiation ritual. The indictment published by the court of Rome set forth and that in all the provinces they had idols, that is to say, heads, some of which had three faces, others but one, sometimes, it was a human skull. The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, Peter Partner states in his 1987 book The Knights Templar and their Myth, In the trial of the Templars one of their main charges was their supposed worship of a heathen idol-head known as a Baphomet. The description of the changed from confession to confession. Some Templars denied any knowledge of it, others, under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces. The Templars did possess several silver-gilt heads as reliquaries, including one marked capud lviiim, another said to be St. Euphemia, the claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars. Karen Ralls, author of the Knights Templar Encyclopedia, argues that it is significant that no specific evidence appears in either the Templar Rule or in medieval period Templar documents. A templar of Florence declared that, in the chapters of the order, one brother said to the other, showing the idol, Adore this head—this head is your god. Alain Demurger, however, rejects the idea that the Templars could have adopted the doctrines of their enemies, helen Nicholson writes that the charges were essentially manipulative—the Templars were accused of becoming fairy-tale Muslims. Medieval Christians believed that Muslims were idolatrous and worshipped Muhammad as a god, with mahomet becoming mammet in English and this idol-worship is attributed to Muslims in several chansons de geste. For example, one finds the gods Bafum e Travagan in a Provençal poem on the life of St. Honorat, in the Chanson de Simon Pouille, written before 1235, a Saracen idol is called Bafumetz. While modern scholars and the Oxford English Dictionary state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable Old French version of Mahomet, in the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins of Freemasonry. I believe it to have been the Pythagorean pentagon of health and it is well known how holy this figure was considered, and that the Gnostics had much in common with the Pythagoreans
9.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and he is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the countrys earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a difficult life. Poe was born in Boston, the child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year, thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but Poe was with them well into young adulthood, tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money, Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at time that his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with the anonymous collection of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement, however, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with John Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the several years working for literary journals and periodicals. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, in Richmond in 1836, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem The Raven to instant success and his wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal The Penn, Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, a number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. He was born Edgar Poe in Boston on January 19,1809 and he had an elder brother William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister Rosalie Poe. Their grandfather David Poe Sr. had emigrated from Cavan, Ireland to America around the year 1750, Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeares King Lear, a play that the couple were performing in 1809
10.
Thelema
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Thelema is a religion based on a philosophical law of the same name, adopted as a central tenet by some religious organizations. The law of Thelema is Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, Love is the law, love under will. The law of Thelema was developed in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley and he believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a spiritual experience that he and his wife, Rose Edith, had in Egypt in 1904. An adherent of Thelema is a Thelemite, the Thelemic pantheon includes a number of deities, primarily a trio adapted from ancient Egyptian religion, who are the three speakers of The Book of the Law, Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Crowley described these deities as a literary convenience, the religion is founded upon the idea that the 20th century marked the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, in which a new ethical code would be followed, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. This statement indicates that adherents, who are known as Thelemites, should seek out and follow their own path in life. The philosophy also emphasizes the practice of Magick. The word thelema is the English transliteration of the Koine Greek noun θέλημα will, from the verb θέλω to will, wish, want or purpose. As Crowley developed the religion, he wrote widely on the topic and he also included ideas from occultism, yoga and both Eastern and Western mysticism, especially the Qabalah. The word θέλημα is rare in classical Greek, where it signifies the appetitive will, desire, sometimes even sexual, but it is frequent in the Septuagint. Early Christian writings occasionally use the word to refer to the human will, and even the will of Gods opponent, the Devil, one well-known example is in the Lords Prayer, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. ”It is used later in the gospel, He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it. In his 5th-century Sermon on 1 John 4, 4–12, Augustine of Hippo gave an instruction, Love. In the Renaissance, a character named Thelemia represents will or desire in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of the Dominican monk Francesco Colonna, the protagonist Poliphilo has two allegorical guides, Logistica and Thelemia. When forced to choose, he chooses fulfillment of his sexual will over logic, the only rule of this Abbey was fay çe que vouldras. In the mid-18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood inscribed the adage on a doorway of his abbey at Medmenham, where it served as the motto of the Hellfire Club. Rabelaiss Abbey of Thelema has been referred to by later writers Sir Walter Besant and James Rice, in their novel The Monks of Thelema, françois Rabelais was a Franciscan and later a Benedictine monk of the 16th century. Eventually he left the monastery to study medicine, and moved to the French city of Lyon in 1532, there he wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel, a connected series of books
11.
Maat
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Maat or Maat was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, cuneiform texts indicate that the word mˤ3t was pronounced /múʕʔa/ during the New Kingdom period, having lost the feminine ending t. Sound shifts from u to e later produced the cognate Coptic word ⲙⲉⲉ/ⲙⲉ truth, later, as a goddess in other traditions of the Egyptian pantheon, where most goddesses were paired with a male aspect, her masculine counterpart was Thoth, as their attributes are similar. In other accounts, Thoth was paired off with Seshat, goddess of writing and measure and her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls of the departed would reach the paradise of afterlife successfully. Pharaohs are often depicted with the emblems of Maat to emphasise their role in upholding the laws of the Creator, Maat represents the ethical and moral principle that every Egyptian citizen was expected to follow throughout their daily lives. They were expected to act with honor and truth in manners that involve family, the community, the nation, the environment, Maat as a principle was formed to meet the complex needs of the emergent Egyptian state that embraced diverse peoples with conflicting interests. The development of such rules sought to avert chaos and it became the basis of Egyptian law, from an early period the King would describe himself as the Lord of Maat who decreed with his mouth the Maat he conceived in his heart. The ancient Egyptians had a conviction of an underlying holiness. Cosmic harmony was achieved by public and ritual life. Any disturbance in cosmic harmony could have consequences for the individual as well as the state, an impious King could bring about famine or blasphemy blindness to an individual. In opposition to the order expressed in the concept of Maat is the concept of Isfet, chaos, lies. In one Middle Kingdom text the Creator declares I made every man like his fellow, a passage in the Instruction of Ptahhotep presents Maat as follows, Maat is good and its worth is lasting. It has not been disturbed since the day of its creator and it lies as a path in front even of him who knows nothing. Wrongdoing has never yet brought its venture to port and it is true that evil may gain wealth but the strength of truth is that it lasts, a man can say, It was the property of my father. There is little surviving literature that describes the practice of ancient Egyptian law, Maat was the spirit in which justice was applied rather than the detailed legalistic exposition of rules. Maat represented the normal and basic values that formed the backdrop for the application of justice that had to be carried out in the spirit of truth and fairness. From the 5th dynasty onwards the Vizier responsible for justice was called the Priest of Maat, later scholars and philosophers also would embody concepts from the wisdom literature, or Sebayt. These spiritual texts dealt with social or professional situations and how each was best to be resolved or addressed in the spirit of Maat
12.
Geomancy
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Geomancy is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand. Geomancy was practiced by people from all social classes and it was one of the most popular forms of divination throughout Africa and Europe, particularly during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In Renaissance magic, geomancy was classified as one of the seven forbidden arts, along with necromancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, Geomancy is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. Geomancy, from Ancient Greek geōmanteía translates literally to foresight by earth, it is a translation of the Arabic term ‛ilm al-raml, earlier Greek renditions of this word borrowed the word raml directly, rendering it as rhamplion or rabolion. Other Arabic names for geomancy include khatt al-raml and darb al-raml, the original names of the figures in Middle Eastern geomancy were traditionally given in Arabic, excluding a Persian origin. The reference in Hermetic texts to the mythical Ṭumṭum al-Hindi potentially points to an Indian origin, having an Islamic or Arabic origin is most likely, since the expansive trade routes of Arabian merchants would facilitate the exchange of culture and knowledge. It is theorized that related systems of divination in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Ifá and sikidy, European scholars and universities began to translate Arabic texts and treatises in the early Middle Ages, including those on geomancy. The poem Experimentarius attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, who wrote in the middle of the 12th century, was a translation of a work on astrological geomancy. Other translators, such as Gerard of Cremona, also produced new translations of geomancy that incorporated astrological elements and techniques that were, up until this point, from this point on, more European scholars studied and applied geomancy, writing many treatises in the process. Geomancy made a revival in the 19th century, when renewed interest in the occult arose due to the works of Robert Thomas Cross, franz Hartmann published his text, The Principles of Astrological Geomancy, which spurred new interest in the divination system. In effect, they had reduced geomancy from an art of interpretation. Like other systems of divination, geomancy has a mythological origin, according to one Arabic Hermetic text, Idris witnessed the angel Jibril in a dream. Idris asked for enlightenment, and Jibril proceeded to draw a figure, upon being asked what he was doing. Keeping this secret, he sought out Ṭumṭum al-Hindi, an Indian king and this book was passed down through clandestine circles into the hands of Khalaf al-Barbarĩ, who traveled to Medina and converted to Islam by the prophet Muhammad himself. Confessing to knowing a divinatory art, he explained that pre-Islamic prophets knew geomancy, another mythological story for the origin of geomancy also involves Idris. After praying to God that He give Idris easily a means to earn his living, Idris rested one day, bored and without work, as he did so, a stranger appeared before him and questioned what he was doing. Idris replied that he was entertaining himself, but the stranger replied that he was doing a very serious act. Idris became incredulous and tried to deny this, but the stranger explained the significance of the meaning of the figure Idris drew and he then commanded Idris to draw another figure, and upon doing so the stranger explained the meaning and significance of that figure
