Divine Assembly: Working with the Egyptian Gods (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781066784622)

Meet the gods of Egypt, and learn to work with them, from within the living tradition.

The gods of Egypt are not dead, and they were never only Egypt's. Their names still stir something in anyone who feels the pull of the old wisdom. But to know them is not to memorise a pantheon. It is to meet them, and that is what this book is for.

In the first volume of Voices of the Nile, Andy Cooper set out the metaphysics of the Egyptian mysteries. Here he turns from understanding to practice, and shows how the great powers of Egypt may actually be approached, greeted, and in time truly known.

Divine Assembly is a working guide to the gods, met neither as museum figures nor as symbols of our own minds, but as living presences with whom a real relationship can be formed. Writing from within the Western Mystery Tradition, and holding each god beside its counterparts in the Qabalah, in Huna and in the wider wisdom, Andy Cooper teaches the courtesy of the shrine and the offering, the building of the body of light, and, at the last, the deep and careful art of the assumption of the godform.

Inside, you will find:

• How to approach a god: the shrine, the offering, and the making of a real relationship
• Ra and Ptah, the two creators, and the light and the word by which the world is made
• Osiris, the slain and risen god, and the mystery of death and return
• Isis and Nephthys, the bright and the hidden faces of the one Goddess
• Set the adversary, and the hard teaching of the necessary dark
• Horus the divine child and Anubis the faithful guide, the two who reconcile the opposites
• Thoth and Ma'at, wisdom and the living law; Hathor and Sekhmet, the gentle and the fierce
• The body of light and the assumption of the godform, taught slowly and with care

As with the first book, it is meant to be worked and not merely read. Every chapter closes with a gentle practice, so that the gods may be met in your own experience rather than taken on trust. Throughout, the author draws on a lifetime in the tradition, and shares first-hand something of his own long work with these powers.

Divine Assembly is written for the seeker and the student of the Western esoteric tradition, for anyone drawn to Egypt who wants its gods as living presences rather than history, and for readers of Dion Fortune, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and the mystery-school tradition they carried. It can be read on its own, though it stands most fully as the companion to the first volume.

Divine Assembly is the second of five books in the Voices of the Nile series, opening the inner tradition of Egypt to the seeker of today.