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The Amdwat
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The
Am-Dwat The map of the Afterlife! Can
it really be true that the Ancient Egyptians actually had a map of the
Afterlife? Well, I am afraid you will have to determine that for yourselves from
what I say and what else you can discover from other books about this fantastic
document. The
Am-Dwat was literally an hour by hour tour of the deceased’s journey from
death to judgment by Osiris. Let
us examine what it describes. Upon
death, there is oblivion and chaos. The
soul is ruptured from the body and has to become aware of its new state of
freedom. The first hour is a period
of discovery and self-awareness and it is in this state that the soul may
proceed through the remaining eleven hours.
The discovery is not about the afterlife, but about one’s self.
It is essential for the soul to come to terms with what life has done to
it in order to be judged. Consequently,
the remaining eleven hours are very perilous and require divine assistance in
order to achieve the goal. To this
end there were three other sacred texts; the Book of the Dead, the Book of Gates
and the Book of Caverns. The
Book of the Dead was a series of prayers, supplications and amulets that protect
the soul on its journey. It is
exactly the same as a good Catholic requiring Mass to be said for the repose of
the soul. The Mass is the
supplication to the Divine to forgive all that is past and allow the soul to
pass from the state of torment in Purgatory to rest and repose in the bosom of
God. The
other two texts, the Books of Caverns and Gates are self-explanatory. The caverns describe the pitfalls that the soul can encounter
through error and sin and the gates are the requirements essential to put the
deceased right with God in order to pass from one stage to the next.
They are both a series of prayers, supplications and formulae that will
unlock one stage and make it possible to enter the next. All
this of course, makes it essential for there to be a divine priesthood which can
guide the layman through these dangers and perils.
Just as there were unscrupulous Catholic Priests like Tetzel who incurred
the wrath of Martin Luther for selling forgiveness of sins to raise money for
the building of the new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome; there were undoubtedly
unscrupulous Egyptian Priests who would cash in on the fear of the people.
However, the reality of the situation is that the Ancient Egyptians
actually dared to make a map of the Afterlife, actually presuming to have
detailed knowledge of every aspect of it. Today similar knowledge is obtained through near death experiences and the work of spiritual mediums. Though many have been proved to be fake, there still are vast numbers of genuine spiritualists who have a combined knowledge which generally concurs which describes several levels of the afterlife related to the spiritual development of the individual. In more conventional terms this is often related to as the seventh heaven, implying that God is there and we can progress to achieve at oneness with Him. Up till that point there are varying degrees of spirituality descending to the Astral Plane which in many ways is a mirror image of Earth and similar to what countless Ancient Egyptians hoped would be their destiny. |
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