{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

(Student introduction: 58, March 18th, 1954)

[Opening remarks missing]

... have a better memory. The more you -- you have to retain in memory, there's -- less is room for the individual fact to juggle around. You have no memory, because you know nothing. It's a scandal how you ruin your memories. You haven't learned anything by heart in your youth, and now you know nothing and you haven't even -- know -- got a memory, which is -- you can build anything on. Gentlemen, you will rue -- be very rueful about this, because nobody can be of any proficiency in any field without an excellent memory. And this is you -- you have wasted. You have destroyed it with your football games. And that's why you -- you simply say, you see, about everything that is told you. It doesn't matter whether you retain it. I told you, "Bring a Bible," and I -- I'm sure two-thirds of you never gave it a thought afterwards. Isn't that true?

But these are -- you are not -- this is not a human being, you see. That's a young dog. Formerly this was called S-O-B.

(We got --)

No. That's -- that doesn't work. I have to have 30 Bibles in this room or the people can't look at it. And they don't know it, so what should I do? Oh -- where's my report today? Take it. Now, {Blascal}.

[tape interruption]

[unintelligible]

Total confusion. Total confusion.

But gentlemen, this is very serious to waste it on you, so you must really understand it right. Obviously the Jews had to leave Egypt before they could institute the Sabbath, you see. So that one day the {Sabbath} wasn't introduced by a smiling pharaoh, you see, or the smiling { } to have the Egyptians {rest}. But it took 40 years in the desert before Moses got his Egyptian friends, the Jews, to give up the Egyptian idolatry of the ever-rolling calendar. That's a very serious business. Gentlemen, the Sabbath is one of the greatest creations of the human race. It's the first independence from astrology, from the overpowering of the stars. You just belittle everything in these papers. These are great things. And

you can't just write them down. You have to write them up.

So I resent this. The Sabbath was not introduced in -- Egypt, you see, because Israel had to leave Egypt in order to create the Sabbath. We'll talk -- about this later. What I have tried to do, however, I have wanted to put you into the Egyptian situation as between the Old Testament -- that comes later -- and after the tribes, that the pharaoh leaves behind. And this was all I tried to say, when I mentioned the Sabbath, to explain you that the Egyptians did not have the Sabbath, and couldn't have, because they -- they { } -- hitched their wagon to a star. If you hitch your wagon to a star, you are in a juggernaut of eternal movement, because the stars move. They have no Sabbath. You see, the -- the seven-day week of the Jews emancipates man from the stars, and from the sky. The Jew does not look to the sky. He looks to God. And God is invisible. He's beyond the Heaven. God is the creator of Heaven and earth. To give you a very simple -- the whole Bible, you see, is written against Egypt. So the first sentence of the Bible is written against the dogma of Egypt, that Heaven creates earth. That's the first sentence of the Bible. It's one of the greatest polemics ever written, as violent as the famous Communist Manifesto: proletarians of all countries, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains. You may have heard this. The great document in -- of 1847, with which Marx invoked a new era. And here we have it today.

So in the same -- exactly the same sense -- you do -- cannot read the Bible, that's why you don't have even a Bible, because it bores you stiff. If you could read it, you would read it as the greatest political pronouncement that has ever been made, against the chambers of commerce of our days and their mechanical calendar against the idea that it only matters to -- to figure 365 days a year or 365 and-a-quarter days, and to belittle the whole problem of our -- of life -- living, gentlemen, in putting you into -- in mechanical boxes of 24 hours a day, you see. You think that's life? That's how you try to live.

Life is at any moment the whole spirit of the whole human race is present. Everything created can come to life through you, if you live it fully. If you don't understand it -- don't understand me, why the Church, whenever it has a great holiday, transgresses the 24-hour day. It has two days. You have abolished Easter Monday. You have abolished Pentecost; you don't even know what it means. You have no idea of -- of Christmas Eve and the second holiday, on December 26. Whenever man felt he is free, you still have the Thanksgiving hol- -- weekend -- that's all you have. Where you learn to celebrate means to change the astrology of the stars, to break away. That's what we call freedom, you see. The Egyptians were not free. They chained -- hitched literally their wagon to a star and so I -- perhaps you take down this sentence. The Egyptians were the enemies against which the Bible has written the sentence, "In the beginning God created Heaven

and earth." For the Egyptians, the sentence would run: "Always the heavens create the earth. There's no beginning. There's no end. Then there is a domination of the sky over the earth."

Now we have to do -- take the opposite step. We have first to do justice to the Egyptians, because, gentlemen, you all, with Washington as an artificial capital of the United States, with 48 states, and with the 36 square miles per township here in New England, as you know, 6 times 6, and with the 38th degree of latitude, or the 54th, we all live partly by Egyptian law. It isn't that this has disappeared. We'll see when you read the "Eternal Jerusalem" in -- in the Apocalypse; that's written against Egypt, but it is written and can only be understood if you understood what Egypt means. If you speak of the throne today, {or if} the chairman takes a chair, or if the Speaker presides over the House, that's all Egyptian law, because it means eternal settlement. A chairman is only possible when there is a high chair. And when there is no chair, you have no stabilized order.

So all these things, gentlemen, which have to do with man's marriage with space, exist. And that's why the "Our Father" -- has to -- had to say, "Thy will be done, as it in -- is in Heaven," you see, "so on earth," because that's the compromise of the synthesis of the reconciliation of Israel and Egypt. Only in this form could the first sentence of the Old Testament, "In the beginning, God created Heaven and earth," could it become acceptable to the pagans. We'll see this, you see.

So -- take down these three sentences, and you will know even better. The Egyptians say, "Eternally the heavens create the earth." Judaism says, "In the beginning created -- God created Heaven and earth." And Jesus makes us say, "Thy will be done in the heavens as it is on earth."

These are three different stages of the human spirit, gentlemen. And you can't escape from them. You like to. You don't think you must know these things, but they are the dogmatic foundations of your own thinking. When you speak of a capital, and of a state, and of a village, you all use Egyptian -- Egyptian dogma, especially when you speak of your beloved private property. And of surveying. All we {do here, that's just -- } the Egyptians were able to survey the Nile Valley to an exactitude of less than five seconds' mistake, 3,000 years before Christ. They were able to measure from the peaks of the desert mountains, which go across the Nile -- that's a winding river, full of meandering, you see -- to such degree of exactitude, because they had to. The existence of their country did depend on the idea of cutting out on earth something as precise as in the sky, what we call a temple -- I tried to tell you last time, you see -- was something cut out with this amazing exactitude. They -- we have nothing to excel. There was a committee

appointed by the English survey -- geographical survey 50 years ago for Egypt. And they tried to remeasure certain parts of Egypt. And they -- and the, for example, the site of the Great Pyramid. And the lengths of the pyramids, and their height, and their relation. Well, they found that their reckoning, although showing a slight deviation from the Egyptians' -- the ancient Egyptians', was not any more reliable. And they could not find out who made the mistake. Because it was so minor, and they had -- were aware of the fact that anybody in figuring in nature something, you see, it doesn't make a certain -- there is a -- how do you call it? -- how do you call this margin of ...?

(Error.)

The margin of error, you see. So this margin of error is as large today as it was after all -- 3000 B.C. That's some achievement. We have nothing added to our -- to our precision. We have nothing added to our weight-lifting capacities. As I told you, there are stones in the -- in the existing temple near Gizeh, across from Cairo, on the Nile River, which weigh 40 tons apiece. They are lying horizontally up in the air on pillars. Nobody knows how they ever were lifted up, or put down. And they are so put together that you can't put a needle between two stones. They are absolutely precise. It has never been excelled and will never be excelled. I mean, the Empire State Building is a {monkey} against that. Nothing.

I have put -- down here -- to you -- on this -- the -- the map. This would be Thebes. That is, the Nile River would go for another 300 miles, up to the First Cataract. This is the First -- would be the First Cataract, the place where the Nile enters Egypt, where the water in a -- in a kind of Niagara Fall, as they would between Canada and the United States, begin to flow without further cataracts, so that you can treat the -- the Nile Valley from the so-called First Cataract to the Mediterranean as one valley. You cannot before, because you cannot get up above the cataract without a large detour, you see. And so beyond the First Cataract is Nubia. There are six -- seven cataracts, they go up the whole Sudan. We call it now the Sudan. The Sudan is marked out by the cataracts of the Nile. The Nile Valley of Egypt is that which is north of the last cataract, but it's called the first. Why? Because from the Egyptian point of view, of course, the desert far behind, you see, it had to be explored from the First Cataract, southward. But we, who always begin every counting with the source of a river, gentlemen, we always would say it is the last cataract. They say it's the first.

Gentlemen, it's very important. The old people -- in antiquity, in general, tribes, and empires and Is- -- Jews really were -- living in real -- were realists. They lived with the facts. You don't. You think it is logical to count from the -- from the source, because you are a geographer. You have an M.A. in geography. When you go up, and you begin -- to count only after you have reached the peak

and come down again. That's an -- completely abstract and scholarly reasoning. Scientific. The ordinary man goes up the White River from this damn White River Junction and what does he do? He -- finds three branches of the White River. Does anybody know how they are counted? Who has been up the White River Valley? Well, then you don't know that there are three branches of the White River, and how are they counted? You know -- you see, you have even -- you always say that you believe in facts. You do not believe in facts. You are not even able to observe a fact. You are absolutely living in the abstract. You do, gentlemen. You th- -- what you call nature is an abstract invention of scholars. It has never been experienced by your five senses. You don't have -- you have lost the faculty of living in reality. And that's what -- why you always speak of "factual," because you have no respect for reality, as it is really impugning your own senses. You have it all from books, from schools. Well, of course, not for nothing that we include you -- enclose you into these institutions for mental health.

Well, gentlemen, this is very important. America in 150 years, now mark you this, especially New England, has run through the history of the human race of 5,000 years, and it -- in its first decades, it still has all the marks of the original settlers of 5,000 years back. Man was forced here back into the primitive decisions. And there -- I mentioned it the last time, but now take this very seriously. I told you that the town of Vermont -- of Norwich was first founded on the hilltop. Then it came down halfway to the side slopes and finally, with the railroad only, did it dare itself to go down into the valley of the White River, into Lewiston. In the same way, gentlemen, the three branches of the White River were named before fortunately there was any Dartmouth College to speak of. And therefore they got still the normal names of people who are acquainted with the facts of life, and not with your abstract idea of nature, the Devil's invention. Because in the normal life of a human society, you name the things in the sequence in which you discover them, and in which you settle in them. Now the first valley -- branch of the White River is therefore the branch first settled. That's the -- the valley that goes up from Royalton into Tunbridge and Chelsea. That's the first branch of the White River. Then you go up from Bethel to Randolph. And that's the second branch of the White River. And then you go up to Stockbridge, and -- where you come out and -- on the left-hand of the road 100 on Sherburne Pass, the end of the White River; that is then the last branch of the White River.

Now that's a very important discovery you can make here, gentlemen. That's the opposite from what a geographer would perceive, because the man who for the first time discovers a country -- he has no time to be a scholar, and to abstract, and to generalize, and to wait till he's on top. He doesn't know if he will ever make the mountain ridge. First he's -- meets one contributary of the White River. He says, "That's the first branch." You understand? He lives really empirically,

and he has not the time to put up a laboratory in nature, an exploration, an expedition of a geography. What you call, gentlemen, "experience" is all experimentation, is all abstract. You treat nature as a laboratory. But what normal men, who have to fight for their lives, have to do, is to count always the other way around. What comes first has to be named first. You cannot wait until you correctly come down the river, because when Royalton and Tunbridge were settled, they -- nobody had yet gone up. Nobody knew how many branches were there to be seen in the future. Can you see this?

This is the Egyptian way of counting the First Cataract. And I only want to explain to you that this is how the world in antiquity presented itself, full of undiscovered paths, and therefore everything numbered in the opposite direction. Now it wouldn't ever happen to a Korean, you see, because he's still a normal human being, to have a line drawn at the 38th degree of latitude, as the Americans did and thereby destroyed Korea. That can only come into the head of a geograph- -- a man who has learned geography. And we have ruined great parts of the world, gentlemen, by this abstraction. Modern man is very cruel. He doesn't -- he doesn't live by empiricism, by experience; but he lives by experiment. That's the opposite. He lives by thinking about things, and not by having the things affect him. Do you think that any ancient man could have ever had the fantastic, the really diabolical idea of splitting Korea by an abstract line of thought which doesn't exist in reality, which we couldn't even respect now, because in the armistice, we had to have some hills that went beyond it, and had to give to the Russians some place where it went southern -- that was the minimum concession we had to make to reality. But you have no idea, gentlemen, that you live in an abstraction, in an absolutely abstract world. You do. Do you think otherwise there would be a million Puerto Ricans flooding New York at this moment? Abstract reasoning. We annexed Puerto Rico in 18- -- {89}. Now we can't do anything. A normal human being wouldn't behave that way. You have this abstract idea. You can't do anything. It's all settled.

Wherever you look, gentlemen, all our foreign policy troubles come from your ineptitude of looking -- not at looking at things, but letting things impress you. But the Egyptians, of course, and all ancient people, had to found their religions on impressions -- really, actually made on them, not on thoughts about the things. Now this is very important, when we now come to the impression made on man by the sky.

Gentlemen, this -- since I don't have the Bible, I will devote this meeting today to the birth of the gods. The tribes have no gods. They have spirits. They have the dead speaking to the living. You remember. And that's why the medicine man had to impersonate the dead, and thereby impressing on the -- living the presence of the dead, that the -- the dead still had claims on the behavior of the

living. Now I said to you { } that the masks could give way to the crown, because the relation of man was completely changed. It was changed from Heaven down to earth. In the empire, gentlemen, perhaps that's the formula you may write down again. You don't find this in any book, gentlemen. That's my whole life work -- 50 years. So don't waste it. I don't like to waste it on you. Try -- write this down, Sir, the gentlemen with the ring. Yes. That in the tribe, the ancestors of the dead speak to the living. But gentlemen, in the empires, the heavens speak to the earth. And we have this literally. In the hymns of the ancients, heavens speak to earth. There's still in the Bible some wonderful Psalm, "Heavens" -- {how does it run}? -- "Give your due to the just," which is a counterhymn against the Egyptian idea that the stars shall speak to men. Now the crown are the rays that come down from the heavens and single out the ruler, and the counts and the dukes. As you know, the counts in Europe are still distinguished by the number of -- of -- what do you call it? Peaks? No, what would be the -- the crown has single -- how do you call the single wedge?

(Point. Point.)

Point, the single point. As you know, they have nine points, seven points, or five points, according to the dignity of the wearer of the crown. And you see, the more points a crown has, the more fully does he represent the celestial influence of the whole sky on earth.

I asked you, under promise of five dollars, to tell me what man could do to the universe of the stars -- do, not think about -- which the stars as seen could not perform. Has anybody a bright idea of this?

[unintelligible]

Ja?

(Man observes the stars?)

Wie?

(Man observes the stars, and the stars don't observe him?)

Well, I said "doing." Observing would -- to be just abstract -- meditation. It would be contemplation. You see it, by the way, our word "contemplation" comes from this, sitting down in a temple, you see, in a {cutting down} and looking up to the stars. Contemplation. But this I do not mean, because that makes the star into an object of our thought. I want to say, "How can a man act better than a star?"

(Man measures his relation to the star.)

But that doesn't mean he proceeds like a star. I say he can do something in the procession of the star. The word "procession" by the way is an Egyptian discovery, you see. Progress and procession, the queen's progress, Elizabeth's progress in Kenilworth, by Scott. Who has read Kenilworth? You remember the king -- queen's progress through -- her country? That's still the Egyptian idea of moving on earth like a star. No, gentlemen. Ja?

(Uh, could you say that a man acts through his will, whereas the star acts through the -- the laws and the --)

Well, the Egyptians certainly thought that the stars acted by their will and that man had to learn their will. I told you they thought that the stars spoke clearly their will, and we had to follow it. A good law is something that speaks.

(Man is free to go backward or forward and move around, whereas the stars were in a set motion.)

You're very near the truth. Very near the truth. Very near the truth. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, to the Egyptians, this discovery that man could turn dialwise, or go against, you see, clockwise, or against the clock, whereas the sun always has to rise in the east, go south and then west was not important, because they wanted to obey the order of the stars. And therefore you could then say, "Well, pharaoh should always turns on his -- go clockwise, as we still do. And you could then just say that the other thing was tabooed. People had such taboos, you see. If you want to observe the stars, why is it better to turn the other way? But one movement had to be done, which the stars cannot perform. And I'm quite close on your track. But even less abstract than your idea. {It altered the Heaven.} Gentlemen, the symbol of the pharaoh of Egypt is a sunball, or a sundisk, carried by two wings. You call this winged sun today, you see it with the -- in the railroad still kept as a symbol. There they have the wheel, with two wings. You must have seen this symbol of the railroad. This is only an imitation of the old Egyptian -- empire ensign, or symbol, or banner, and it is of tremendous significance, gentlemen. The two wings are the wings of the pharaoh with which he is able to go and carry the south -- sun from the south to the north. The movement of -- from the south to the north is essential to this geographic -- geography of -- of Egypt, because from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean, it is 1500 kilometers, over 1,000 miles long. To unite such a country without any other preparation, without any technical means, was the greatest miracle mankind has ever achieved. That's why it has never been lost again. People have all kneeled before the miracles of Egypt. Plato has. Archimedes has. Pythagoras has. And Thales of Miletus, all the Greek philosophers. It couldn't be matched.

How was it done, gentlemen? The symbol of Egypt is the sun-disk with the two wings, conveying to every subject in Egypt the idea that although -- although on earth you could not see further than the next corner of the Nile, the next bend of the Nile -- and you cannot, you can only see perhaps for three or four miles, it just goes always winding, you see -- that the sky was the same over Egypt all along. And pharaoh, the emperor, the god-king, the priest was able to ride out the Nile flood from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean and thereby progress, like a star, in the order in which no other star could proceed from south to north. To unite what in -- in the heavens forever separated. You see, the sun can only go into three visible directions. It can never reach north. The north is hidden. One sees the sun attack in summertime. It's -- finally arrives in the northeast and it sets in the southwest. To the ancients, this was an attempt of the sun to conquer, to enlarge its scope, its -- its power. But {funny} enough, on June 21st, when the l„ng- -- longest day is reached, the sun breaks down in her attack, as we were -- had to go back in our Tenth Corps, in Northern Korea at the Yalu River where we had it already, and we didn't reach the Russian frontier at -- near Vladivostock, as you know, and Mr. {Allman} had to turn back and he never came back again. It's all winter now. So this is, you know, the winter of our displeasure -- in Shakespeare?

(Winter of our discontent.)

Yes, our discontent was -- ? Turned in summer by the sun of York, isn't that?

Now the Egyptians, for the whole idea of exploiting the flood of this dangerous river, which drove every cat and mouse into the desert, because it is completely flooded, the Nile, between these two hills in the summer, had to promise these people some stabilities. We always speak -- speak today in sociology of security, that everybody wants security. How could they persuade Bedouin, tribesmen, migratory people who were swift of foot, and were accustomed to carry themselves away from any pestilence, feverish region, any region in the swamps, simply by leaving it alone, when it got wet there, as we try to leave mud at mudtime this part of the world and go to Florida? How could they persuade them to settle? They had to show them that the sky was {here}. Man, if you can't understand this { }, you want to understand all that you read in books about thrones, settlements, towns, states, constitutions, we'll write something stable in the sky. What's the constitution? The Constitution of the United States links the principles of life to something eternal; come Democratic Party or Republican Party, or the Whigs, we have the Constitution. That's written in our sky. We have some -- some such sky, too. It's an abstract sky. But the Constitution has survived for 180 years because with the various parties coming in and going out, man needs something he could look up to all the time. The Constitution, gentlemen, is the substitute for the security gained by the stability, not only of the sky,

but -- perhaps you mark this very much out, too -- by its unity.

For primitive man, who has no telephone, who has no railroad, nothing what you take for granted, what only the Egyptians prepared in their creation -- they invented the telegraph in the sense that they made it sure that one day we would invent the telegraph, because they yearned for it. Their telegraph was the universal visibility of the stars and the sun. You could see the sun in the Mediterranean, and you could see them at the First Cataract. The priests and the temples, gentlemen, in every part of Egypt expressed this belief in the identity of the sky everywhere. Egypt was divided into districts of 36 -- of course, for good reason, because 36 has to do with the -- with the cyc- -- circle, the 360 degrees of the circle, and the 12 months and the 360 days of the year, as we shall hear -- and in every temple, the priest would invoke with great solemnity the movements of the stars as being just the ones in the -- at the other part of Egypt. The great satisfaction from the subjects of this new pharaoh was that they could be sure that at the same moment the same movements were to be seen in the heaven, although the whole valley was flooded, or it was parched with heat, or it had to be now har- -- you see, seeded down, or it had to be harvested.

This is the importance of the calendar, gentlemen, of a -- of the primitive settlers of China, for example, of the Incas, or of the Egyptians, which has never been understood. Why did the Incas worship the sun? They never worshiped the sun, gentlemen. They bowed to the movements of the sun. This is very different. And that's why the sun is not the god of Egypt, but the carrier of this sun on his two disks. That is, the name of this -- of this divine power of the human spirit was Horus. Horus. Horus is pharaoh, as being able to go from south to north. And this is the birth of a god, the gods, gentlemen, of the ancient men, against which the -- Israel and Christianity have placed their -- their recognition of God. The gods of the -- of the empires are all celestial gods. God -- our god is supercelestial, as St. Augustine said -- calls Him. Our god is supercelestial. If you believe in a -- that God is in Heaven, you are pagan. It's not so simple. The meaning of the Fa- -- "Our Father" bends over backward to allow the pagan to become a Christian, but "Our Father who art in Heaven," means that He is in -- on earth, too. And through us, we -- His will enters the earthly life. It is always the unity of the first sentence of the Old Testament -- "In the beginning God created Heaven and earth -- which you must hear through everything said in the New Testament. But there are many people today who are Egyptians again and call themselves Christians, you see, because many -- superstitious people today would like to have God identified with Heaven.

God is higher than the Heavens and lower than the earth. As long as you do not understand this, gentlemen, you are in the darkness of Egypt, and at the fleshpots of Egypt, too. That all these expressions, gentlemen, are very real. The

great temptation, because what could pharaoh promise his people? He could promise them that all -- if they only stayed with him, over the three months of the flood, beginning July 19th of the year 2778, as I have told you, and ending in the celebration -- last great celebration of the down- -- the fall of Christianity in 395 of our era -- that's the length of the Egyptian story, perhaps you take down these dates -- they're quite interesting -- that beginning 2778 and ending in 395 of our era when the great temple of Serapis of the Egyptian -- one of the Egyptian gods in Alexandria was closed and destroyed, 395. This is so important because it was closed, when the Egyptian priests boasted that this man, God Jesus Christ could only last 365 years, that was one year of their religion, one day, one year. Now from 30 to 300- -- to 395 there would be -- have lapsed 365 years, and the Egyptian priests said, "This madman Christ, we give him a chance of 365 of our celestial days, where every day is one whole year, and in 395, He will be at an end." So the emperors took this very amiss and the bishops, and -- in order to show that the Egyptians had wrong- -- guessed wrongly, they abolished the last services of the Egyptian priest, as late as that. The Egyptian religion has lasted as long as the first 400 years of our own era.

I think this -- this reckoning may interest you: that Christianity was attacked on astrological grounds, that they wanted to find some explanation for the great spread of Christianity, and so they said, "Well, let's -- let us have them -- let them have one constellation," you see, one 365 turning {-- turn-around}. Mr Hitler, who was an Egyptian, if any -- there ever was one -- and who believed in astrology, spoke of it, that Christian- -- that the solar constellation of Christianity was over. He used exactly the same ideology as the Egyptian priests, you see. Very interesting that he should accept this. He said the solar constellation of Christianity was over. Most of you believe this, too.

Now, the gods are born because one man is God. The pharaoh has two crowns. The sun has only one, because, gentlemen, Horus can do what the star of the night, and the sun and day can only do together. Because if you wait till it gets dark, what do you see in the sky? What do you see in the north? You see something very impressive, that impressed early men. You see the Arcturus. You see the Polar Star. You see the Great Child's Wain. Because you see the ineluctable, not-moving, permanent northern stars. They cannot move, they don't want to move, they are invincible, however, because whenever you look up, any question?

(Yeah. They had a different polar star than we do.)

Pardon me?

(They had a different polar star than we do now.)

Yes. Quite right. Well. Well, if you want me to go into this in detail?

(No.)

There was, however, in their -- in their firmament a star. I know all about this, Sir. But I -- this is -- is not very important at this moment, is it? It's not very important -- of course, if you see that the whole firmament finally moves, you have to take another polar star. This was nothing in their political problem -- problematic. If they had north, they had north. That's all they need.

All our stars have been renamed 20 times, I mean. The Arabs gave us part of the name Betelgeuse, and Orion is, of course, the replacement for the {Sahu}, the Egyptian name, you see. Sirius was not -- the Egyptians did not call Sirius "Sirius," although it was the most important star in their lives. So what of it? Just -- I mean, I don't see of what -- what relevance it is. I admire your knowledge.

But gentlemen, Horus is a double god, because what he does is unite day and night. He -- when he goes from the First Cataract to the northern shore, to the north -- northern end of Egypt into the delta -- here, I tried to put the delta in, not to exaggerate it, but it is really much more impressive, because -- this would be Cairo. Here would be the great pyramids, Gizeh. Here is Memphis. Now, it is so narrow here, it is only 30 miles wide at the widest place, in the whole valley of the Nile, a thousand miles' length through the First Cataract. It's nowhere more land. Perhaps you take this figure down. The whole fruitland of Egypt is as large as Belgium, yet the distances are as large as in America. You travel 1200 miles from the First Cataract to the outposts at the Mediterranean, you see, which is as far as New York-Florida. But the arable, tillable soil, which you can really have -- use for production is not more than the area of Belgium. And the area of Belgium is, by and large, little -- as much -- I have forgotten the figures. I wouldn't be surprised if it was as much as New Hampshire and Vermont taken together.

So it is a fantastic hose, or tube, this whole of Egypt. And here, I have to exaggerate this now, as it really is -- the delta's certainly spreading out in this -- compared to the center here, in tremendous {ways}. The Horus of Egypt is then able to do something that he borrows from the stars in the -- at night, who stand to the north. The symbol of the Horus is a falcon, a falcon spearing, which is very strange, this combination -- or a bull sometimes -- spearing the northern star, throwing it from the south against his large thigh, his upper thigh, the thigh of the -- of the star of this constellation inside which -- that is really my anger with you -- you. They never thought of single stars. They had always constellations. And Child's Wain was also not in the center then. But it is a small polar -- what we call -- what we -- how do you call this -- the small wagon? And the large one and the -- I don't know the English expression.

(Bear.)

Wie? You say "bear" too, probably.

(Dipper. Dipper.)

Dipper. Pardon me. Dipper. That's the word.

So this -- this movement that Horus can throw the -- the spear against the constantly inflexible, not-moving north: that's the symbol of uniting Egypt. And he spears whom? His hostile brother Set, who is called his enemy. Horus and Set are this strange couple, this strange pair which cannot be one without the other. There is no Horus without taking aim toward the north. And there is no Set if he isn't overcome time and again by Horus. Horus and Set are the two hostile brothers. And at the moment when the pharaoh arrives in the north at the shore of the sea, he is Horus and Set. The title of the emperors of Egypt, gentlemen, is very stringent. It is he who can look at Horus and Set. It's one of the divine things, gentlemen, which is nearly impossible for you and me to understand. The ancient gods in antiquity are all at the same time saviors and demons. Calamities and blessings. And the ancient man did not think ever of his god as merciful, or good, or friendly, but as a power that at times go wild and de- -- and be destroyer, "savior and destroyer" is perhaps the best expression, gentlemen. All ancient prayers, all the statues which you see in the Peabody Museum in -- in Boston, for example, about the -- the Mexican gods, show you in alternation the face of a human and the face of a dragon. All the length -- long side of the pillar. Some of you must have seen such columns, have you? Who has seen such columns? That's always the two faces of the same god. Because it is the same god who can withhold his support and destroy us. If he's on our side, he suddenly can support us.

Gentlemen, ancient men, before Christ is born, feel that creation at every one moment threatens us with death and gives us life. And in no moment are we sure which is coming. You have forgotten that, because you live so deeply in the -- in the cradle of an all-merciful god. But it is still true. If you come to think of it, you would no -- not live in the story of our own era, you would all feel like an ancient man that at any one moment, death and life are in the scales. In a time, with this infant mortality, you see, and women in childbirth dying, and people of the warpath being killed, and nobody growing up to a ripe old age actually, except some very exceptional beings, most people dying at 25 or 30, you can imagine that these people were much nearer to the really wild, natural process; and nature is absolutely ineluctable. It is -- you never know. You breathe. Well, if it is monoxide gas, you die. If it is -- happens to be oxygen or {nozone}, you live. But you can't, if you are primitive man, guarantee that the air isn't poisoned. You

cannot guarantee that the hailstorm is not throwing you down. We live so -- safe, you see, so hidden away from the ways of providence, that you do not understand how mi- -- miraculous it is that one day you are drafted, and the other day you are sent to Korea, and the next day you have peace, and the fourth -- over next day you can play football, and then the fifth day there is a war again. And nothing is of your making. You live in such a fool's paradise that you really think man makes his own destiny. You even say that man is the captain of his soul, or he's self-made.

Well, such a man, of course, cannot understand man's relation to the ancient gods. The ancient gods are destroyers as well as saviors. Horus and Set are the first god { } in history. And that's why it's worth looking into their meaning, gentlemen. Horus and Set are two aspects of the divine spirit. As long as Horus is in the South, and Set resists him, and the country is not united, and there is no one temple service, no one priesthood functioning, whenever there is danger that the country disintegrates, there's Horus and Set. Whenever the pro- -- triumph -- triumphant Horus carries the sun and the moon, for that matter -- that's why the symbol is so -- we will see -- has been duplicated -- carries it from the First Cataract out into the sea, he is Horus and Set, both. This is his triumph. That's why he has -- as I said, he has two crowns on his head. He is a double monarch. The first great exper- -- experience of the Egyptians was that one man becomes immortal and divine because he can break the jinx of the eternal separation of day constellation and night constellation. He can do what the sun and the northern star do in combination. He can bring them together. He can, so to speak, be the alchemist of the sky, if you like the expression, you see, because he can mix the order of day and night and force them together. It's this fusion which has dictated the whole -- law, the whole constitution, the -- all the texts of which we find in the Egyptian graves, thousands and thousands of spells, the socalled texts of the pyramids. The texts of the pyramids tell you the story of this union of the lands, as it is called; how Horus must spear Set and, so to speak, drink him in; but how every year, when the Nile falls and becomes a trickle, then Set rises again in his threat, because if Horus is victorious, then he rides the crest of the wave, as we say today. That's an Egyptian expression. The flood, you see -- rushes down and takes this water of the Nile -- by the way, in order to make you -- known the whole problem of Egypt, to think of this as a unity, in a time when Rhode Island would have been a large country, next to impossible to unite, well, and such days to unite this Egyptian country was, of course, such an incredible conception that at any one moment, people trembled to see it disappear again. It would disappear if the Nile did not -- did not live. Egypt was ruined if the flood didn't reach 16 yards. That was the minimum, 16 half-meters, what -- how do you call it? 20 inches. I don't know what the measure there would be. It's a little more than half a yard, by which the Egyptians measured.

(A rod. Rod.)

It is this length, from elbow -- from elbow to -- to finger.

(Cubit.)

What?

(It's a cubit.)

Cubit. Is that the word? Thank you. So the Egyptian fate was decided by measuring the altitude of the flood of the Nile every year. They had a special marker in Cairo, from time immemorial, the meter of the Nile. And they built it into the ground, as a kind of a water temple. And you may go down the steps, and when it is dry nine months of the year, you can go to -- down quite deep. And then there is figured out, and of course, in the opposite direction again as with the First Cataract, the first cubit is not on top, where you would begin, you see, with the -- with the plumbing line, to figure. You would -- we would go down to the plumbing line from the top down in to the water -- wouldn't we? -- and then count to 16. But the Egyptians of course counted in the dry time. They built into -- as deep as they could, and then if the Nile rose, the highest would be 16, you see, and a flood that was still tolerable was 12.

Now you find this all in the Old Testament very carefully described, with the 17 years and the seven fat years of Egypt. This simply true, that the Egyptians trembled every year that Horus might not reach Set, that the whole country might not allow him to ride victor- -- ride out the flood, that would be a flood that would be too meager really for force Set down. Of course they had to try. The pharaoh made this procession in the first years of the -- of the Egyptian history, every year. Later he made it every two years. Later he made it when he come -- come on the throne. But this was the pharaoh's progress. And if you read the Elizabethan poetry, you will still find that the word, "the king's progress," plays a great part in the imagination of the time. That's the Egyptian institution: the ruler does not rule before he hasn't progressed through his kingdom. Do you understand? He has to take possession. In Egypt, or in China for that matter, originally meant that you had to out-ride the flood in order to bring the same sky-world, the same order to every inhabitant so that pharaoh actually could say to every villager, "Be quiet. We have one order." And of course, this villager otherwise would never hear of him or see of him. He had to be known, and he had to make himself known as the carrier of the good tidings. In this sense, gentlemen, the Egyptians had their gospel, too. The gospel was that man was di- -- divine who, in -- together with the -- all the priests together serving him, observing the sky was able, you see, to be supermortal.

Gentlemen, the idea of the divine right of kings comes, of course, from Egypt. It wasn't so fantastic as it sounds to you. You had to have a knowing class. The man who does -- tills the soil, or is the fisherman, and hunts crocodiles just doesn't -- cannot know. He has not been set aside to live in the heavens.

So you see, gentlemen, a stargazer, or an astrologer, for that matter, or a priest in Egypt is not what you call a priest or I. The word "priest" is -- would be quite wrong-chosen, because priest is just older. But it is a chosen clergy. The word "clergy" is better, because it is the clergy through whom the ruler knows. It is the bodyguard of the -- Horus for the sky-world, just as the soldiers are the bodyguard against the enemy. And the tillers of the soil are his bodyguards against the -- the soil, against the earth. So pharaoh always shifts, so to speak, in his uniform. As we have a chief executive, you see, and the Chief Justice, and commander-in-chief, and then the Speaker in the Congress, the Vice President, you see, you would think at first that the first ruler of man-pharaoh had all these four qualifications. But he had the clergy to tell him the hours of the sky-world. And he had the soldiers only to protect him on earth.

Can we go on? Is this all right? Pardon me for not having interrupted this in time. Now, let's -- let's finish. I'll break off five minutes earlier.

This is then, gentlemen, the insight which we gain from the gods of nature. The world is split. Not one moment does man know what is disaster, or what is astra; what is constellation, and what is discontent. It has to be restated every year. In China -- and all the countries, by the way, exactly the same in Mexico, where emperors ruled -- the new year has to be proclaimed by the emperor. And you perhaps know all -- the symbol which has survived to our own days in which this victory over the separation of day and night, of north and south, has been expressed. Every emperor has to swing his sword into the four directions -- south, north, east, and west -- in order to proclaim that he's a god. That is, he can do something that is not found without him. That's why all the houses in Egypt are oriented, the whole country, because the -- wherever you have the orientation in the four directions, you have the divine power -- you can say the manner of the emperor -- at work. You have this great art to follow out the dealings of sun and moon on earth.

The Horus who carries the sun was complemented, or supplemented by the idea of the mother moon-goddess, who would carry the moon on her horns. This is very interesting, I think, to you to make you these goddesses and gods a little more understandable. The moon has not the same exact movements as the sun, but in -- generally, also moves -- she also moves, as you know, from east to south to west. Only that she moves in a much shorter while. So the mother of Horus was called {Athor}, which means the house of Horus. The house, the womb, you

can also translate it -- it's very difficult to make the distinction between womb and house in the ancient language -- and she is also given as a -- as a cow, the sacred cow. And you still speak of the sacred cow when you say, "There are no sacred cows in Boston." In the Ganges River, the Hindus still have the sacred cow. That is, the divine power of the mother of the pharaoh, who can carry the moon in the same liberty, so to speak, in the same way as he can carry the sun. But as you say, she's given as a cow, and so Horus is -- is called with the rather eminent name as his mother's bull, or his mother's husband.

The strange myths which you hear of Zeus begetting children with Europa, the cow, or others in which he himself appears as a bull, come all from Egypt. They are all attempts of the -- the Greeks to make the best of this, which only made sense in the Nile River -- Valley. It makes -- made no sense, as we shall see, in -- in Greece. And the whole mythology of Greece is a kind of compromise with the Egyptian great facts of life. The cow went to India. The Chinese took over the whole idea of orientation. To make it easy for you to compare these things, I -- let me -- make one -- say one little thing about this. The problem of China was to give to a region with two large rivers the same constitution as a city with one river -- a country with one river. You know they have the Yellow and the Green River. And the achievement of China, by which it pro- -- for which it probably has outlasted Egypt by only -- by the way -- 1500 years, is that China had this -- to solve these two- -- two-river problems. That's why the emperor's progress in China did not play the same role as in Egypt, that the Peking Center, the central residence, was -- took the place of this. The Egyptians made the same attempt. They tried to become Chinese. It became very clumsy, very inconvenient to have the -- pharaoh spend all his time on this formal progress after they had built all the temples, after they had organized the priesthood in these 36 districts, after they had counts and gardeners, and superintendents of the ditches and the canals right and left of the Nile, you see, after -- over centuries, the {Kopka} said to pharaoh, "Stay at home." And he proceeded and tried to do this and he lived then in a new residence, gentlemen, up here, higher up in Thebes, where most Americans go. It's called Luxor now, with an Arabian name. You may have heard of Luxor, or Thebes. That's already a decline of the Egyptian idea, because it is no longer based on Horus and Set, but on the possibility of watching the movements.

Now you come to contemplation, you see, on your power. That's the secondrate power, to be able to contemplate the stars. First you have to outdo them, in order to get obedience; because as long as every human being can look at the stars, you see, nothing of unity is achieved. You had to have one who, based on his clergy, and his military might, you see, could race and unite the skies. You see, that the individual cannot do. Because if you embark with -- as -- as yourself on the day on the First Cataract, you could be stopped by one crocodile in your

little sailboat, you see, the next corner. And the myth is full of the stories, you see, how around every bend of the Nile River, pharaoh is attacked by Set's men, how they try to block his progress, how it takes all the followers of Horus to carry him through.

Now, I only meant to say, gentlemen, you may have heard of King Ikhnaton -- Ikhnaton, Amenhotep IV and his famous city Tel-el-Amarna. Most people only hear of this declining year of Egypt's might.

If I can explain to you that failure of Tel-el-Amarna, and why Egypt rejected Amenhotep IV or Ikhnaton, then you have understood the Egyptian problem. And then you have understood why Moses left Egypt. Because the two events that are -- three -- there are three events connected. The exodus of the Jews, the reign of Amenhotep IV, Echna- -- called Echnaton in our sources, E-c-h-n-a-t-o-n, and the calendar of Egypt.

The emperor brought the rule of one agriculture, the rule that after three months of flood, people would be able to settle and therewith he brought the idea of a plan for the whole country of storehouses which would feed 2 million people very soon. There must have been as many, very early, in three months without their getting anything out of the ground, because there was noth- -- is nothing. You can even say for five months. In the drought season and in the flood season, there is nothing to eat in Egypt. Absolutely nothing. Imagine. Not even fish, because of the rapidity of the flood. You cannot afford to go on these canoes then and try to fish.

So the great conception of the Egyptian year was to have stored away during one half-year what you have to need the other half-year. So General Mills was invented.

Pardon me?

This is the calendar of Egypt, gentlemen, a storehouse calendar, which tells you exactly how much you have to lay in, store, in order to reach the next flood. That's why these 16 cubits were God himself. They were the god Osiris. The flood in Egypt is Osiris. The man who allows Egypt to become the seat of one land, he's written with an eye and the throne. It's a maker of the throne. The throne alone needs {Isis and he} ...

[Tape interruption]

... unity of his body. And then he can fertilize his land and if you -- now, please don't laugh, because it is very serious, although it is something that has to

do with sex. The Egyptians felt that this god was rising to his power, that his living rod, his phallus, his member virile, was in this flood able to fertilize the land, and Isis, the mother of Horus -- {Athor}, was at the receiving side, and the Egyptians have introduced this sacred rite which goes -- is at the bottom of all the mysteries, of all the later mysteries, of the Athenian mysteries, and all the later rituals of the Middle Ages, that the woman received into her womb, being in the upper position as the sky, as the heaven, and the man lying down, and fertilizing her, because the flood had to come and lift him up. This most unnatural, and you may say, perverse con- -- conception was the great secret preserved in all the Egyptian temples. Osiris is lying on his back. His -- his living rod, as I like to call this our -- the pride of man is rising and Isis is receiving into her womb the living waters. You cannot understand Egypt- -- Greek mythology later and nothing of the mysteries of later time if you do not -- are -- are not initiated into this strange conception that Heaven is the woman, and earth is the man. But not the dead earth, not the earth of the jungle, not the earth, you see, as is. But this miraculous, living earth which -- in which the flood unites the particles of the desert, of the dark land, which is lying separated, you see, ly- -- as -- if you have the members of a body quartered. Now this is exactly what the {Biblical} texts tell us. Osiris for nine months is quartered. He's divided -- all his limbs are separated and his central limb, the limb of -- the member of regeneration, of generation cannot be found. And at the moment in which the flood comes, he is rising, in all his might, and he's able to fertilize the whole of Egypt. Hovering over him is the form of the moon-goddess of {Athor}. That is a very strange conception, but I had to introduce you into it. I am very grateful to you that you have listened seriously, because we have to respect these old conceptions.

You can see that the life of men served to explain the cosmic processes. Gentlemen, for the Egyptians, birth and generation are what for the Greeks and for your little mind, and for the physicists' mind is causation. The ancients conceived of causation as generation and birth. It's not a bad idea. They say -- from which this has come -- cop- -- you get, for example, an alloy metal -- they say, "Gold is his father." You see. "Copper is its -- is its mother." That's still alchemistic language. So much did the Egyptians try to describe causation by birth and generation. They say when -- what does this come from? You say, "Why -- how -- where does this come?" you see, you give a cause. This no Egyptian, or no primitive man would have understood. They say, "It is born from this -- and such-and-such as his father." This they could understand.

I must say I'm a little deaf on the ear of causation myself. When modern man always gives causes, I do not understand much. It doesn't explain much to me, these so-called causes. As a matter of fact, you know, many natural scientists have given up this whole reasoning, terms of causation. The whole problem with modern physics is to get rid of causation.

But the Egyptians had this first urge. And therefore the cause of the unity of Egypt is that the corpse of Osiris is unified. It becomes one body to be compared to the human body and inspires the mother of Horus, and Horus, the son then follows suit, and he is the revenger of Osiris. That is, Osiris obviously has been killed by Set, by the man who resists the unity, by this northern district which holds out against any power in the heavens, {to come near him} who repels the sun when she moves -- he moves into him -- upon him, you see, even at the solstices. The next -- last moment Set is able to tell the sun, "Turn back, you can't come near me." The revenger of his father, that's the official title of "pharaoh," the revenger of his father, Osiris -- here you see the idea of the vendetta of the tribe suddenly translated into a completely new situation. The revenge is between the powers of Heaven and earth. Set is this power in the sky, you see. And earth is revenged by the superhuman, celestial -- falcon-god, Horus, who can tell the celestial powers against Osiris, { }. "I ride the flood and I thereby tell you Osiris lives again. He's there."

In this sense, gentlemen, ancient religion is -- believes in resurrection. This is not an invention of Christianity. The -- Osiris rises again every new year. And you must understand Christianity, because you cannot understand the Easter story if you do not understand -- this is a fact -- that the coffin of Osiris had to be found by his mother -- by his wife, Isis -- Isis, when he receded -- the flood receded again and the country went back into -- into dryness after the harvest, then Isis says, "Oh, where is his coffin?" And tries to find the coffin of Osiris. The Easter search in the -- in the Gospels, gentlemen, for the corpse of Christ, is in sublimation, or in superemana- -- or how would you say, in overcoming the Egyptian story of the search for the coffin of Osiris and his corpse. That was a ritual which was just as much done every half-year as the begetting. In summertime, Isis received the seed from the flooded Nile into her womb. Six years later, she went mourning with her sister Nephthys to try to find where Osiris was buried.

I'm sorry, my time is up. Next time I'll tell you more.