Welcome back to this journey through The Kolbrin.
So, we are currently working our way through The Sacred Registers; and this post will, like the last one, deal with more of the relatively short chapters (this time, Chapters 4,5 & 6) that we find in this section of The Book of Scrolls (aka The Book of Books, The Lesser Book of the Sons of Fire, and The Third Book of the Bronzebook).
The narrative we’re about to encounter is still a kind of commentary on the soul’s journey after death – mostly in the ancient Egyptian tradition, but containing some strange allusions to, and echoes of, what sound like Brythonic Celtic place and personal names. The inference is that we are dealing with Egyptian funerary rites that have somehow been transported (or transplanted) into the culture of late Bronze Age or, possibly, early Iron Age Britain. So, let’s begin . . .
We start off with a disembodied soul which has already passed the first test of whether it has been a goodie or a baddie during its earthly existence and is now making its way through ‘Heavenland’ accompanied by a band of worthy companions.
The soul is now timeless in appearance, with all vestiges of the old age it wore whilst in human form gone. In fact, the soul now exists outside of time, immune to its touch. It has passed through what the book calls the Wide Hall and the Narrow Portal to the Land of New Dawning to be greeted by those it knew on Earth who have passed this way before.
The soul’s journey continues past the Place of Waiting Souls where the Kohars await the arrival of their earthly twins and the moment of reunification. It passes by the flame that keeps apart the lost souls whose transgressions on Earth has cost them a chance at eternal bliss, doomed creatures who cower in shame as the bright new soul throws a compassionate glance in their direction.
And as the soul penetrates deeper into the realm of bliss, those it has left behind on Earth cease their mourning because they know that the departed one is now safe from all harm and its eyes are open to the splendour of eternity.
But it’s not all ‘feet up and relax’ for the new Shining One; there is work to do, beings to guide, lessons to teach, so it goes in search of the ‘Illuminator’ who will allocate the new duties. The soul cleanses itself in the Lake of Beauty and refreshes itself in the Fountain of Life and catches a glimpse of some other spirits who sound as if they are in a kind of purgatory, in that they’ve been purged of their earthly wickedness and lusts but still don’t quite cut the mustard to make it to ‘Shining One’ level. Apparently, these spirits will get another shot at passing muster, but the text is unclear whether that involves another incarnation on Earth or simply a retrial at the scales that measure good and evil.
Anyway, back to our soul, who now carries out his duties of instructing others and guiding them on the path and then, having been purified, emerges wearing The White Mantle of Greatness. The implication is that the soul is now accessible to those on Earth who seek its counsel. If this soul, says The Kolbrin, is an indication of the greatness into which earthly experience can mould a human-being during its time there, then our planet, as a forging furnace and testing ground, is fulfilling the purpose for which it was created.
The text gets a bit obscure and confused at this point in chapter 4, but it seems to suggest that those humans who are most immersed in the physical trappings of life (acquisition of wealth, physical comforts, gluttony, alcoholism etc.) or prone to excesses of the negative passions (lust, hatred, envy, and so forth) are those whose minds are most closed to messages of enlightenment and spiritual fulfilment.
Chapter 4 ends with a wish that the soul which has been the subject of the narrative become a beacon that guides the way for us all, a herald that lights a path through the darkness as a servant of the Great Illuminator.
And so to Chapter 5; and this is where things start to get really interesting. It opens with the statement:
These are the instructions for those who journey the outer track of the twinway, for those who have been laid in the chambered tombs, who followed the ways of Kemwelith. The words are those from the distant past, first spoken in a far land beyond the rolling billows.
The ‘outer track of the twinway’? ‘Chambered tombs’? ‘The ways of Kemwelith’? ‘A far land beyond the rolling billows’? What’s all that about then? Well, it sounds very much to me that what we have here is an account (genuine or fabricated – you make up your own mind on that) of the (suggested) after death experience of the follower of a person or teaching (Kemwelith, I suspect, could be either, but definitely sounds Celtic) buried in a chambered tomb (these are neolithic in origin but litter the British Isles). The rite to which we are about to listen is not native to the land in which this person was buried but originates in a ‘far land’, and that land – judging by the content of the narrative and some of the terminology used – just has to be Egypt. And this, in my own words, is what the scribe has written . . .
The departed human (a male) has led an exemplary life which has entitled him to certain ‘benefits’ (passwords, raiment, and so on) that will help him navigate obstacles on his post-death journey. He zips through the ‘Clearing House’ of departed souls and arrives at the ferry boarding point (ferries are a trope beloved of just about every belief system, signifying, as they do, not only a passage from one state to another, but their carriage over the otherwise uncrossable border/separation line; that is, a body of water – river, lake, sea, whatever).
Eventually, the ferryman turns up, but it is his job to be suspicious. Not every soul has the right to cross this particular border, which we are told is the Winding River of Purification. The newly departed soul is quite haughty and demands to be ferried forthwith to the ‘Region of the Blessed Ones’. He is, he says, already purified and carries no evil taint, and is eager to get to his destination. But the ferryman is not convinced and asks the soul where it comes from. The answer is Restaw – possibly a Celtic sounding name, possibly a made-up name, possibly a transliteration of part of one of the Egyptian titles of Osiris as Lord of Restaw/Restow – anyone’s guess, really.
Again, the departed soul tries to hurry the ferryman along, but still this version of the Greek Charon won’t budge. ‘Show me your token,’ he demands, ‘that I may know you have truly passed the tests, that I may know your true destination.’ And then the ferryman is given what, in my opinion, is the best line in the whole chapter:
For it is the way with men that they think one thing but Truth lies elsewhere.
And ain’t that the truth!
But that’s about all the impertinence the newly departed soul is prepared to take from the ferryman. He turns the tables and tells the ferryman that, unless the ferryman himself is an imposter, he should be able to see the ‘token’ of brightness shining above his head (halo, aura?) and read the entry on him written in the Book of Sacred Mysteries. He points out that he has come accompanied by the proper four companions, two on either side, who will speak for his legitimacy.
The ferryman grudgingly accepts the evidence, but there is still something to prove as the company boards the ferry and takes positions to guide the vessel safely across the treacherous water. The new soul gives his full credentials. He tells the ferryman that he has passed all the tests to get to this point; that his virtuous life on Earth, where men speak well of him, should be enough to claim passage. The ferryman tells the soul to prove this by drawing aside his mantel, a metaphor, I believe for the soul to stand exposed in its true likeness, with all outer ‘protections’ and ‘pretentions’ thrown aside. The ferryman wants to see the soul naked for he will not have his boat polluted by a pretender. The result is more than the ferryman expects. The soul is radiant – and more, a truly great shining one, and the crossing may begin.
But the last passage in Chapter 5 is seriously enigmatic, because the soul, having proved its worthiness to pass over, makes a very strange comment. ‘Delay no longer,’ it tells the ferryman, ‘If you delay further I will name the names of gods to men, that their unreality be exposed. I am not one to be trifled with. I am one who can dispel the clouds of illusion. I am a man of no mean qualities, therefore tarry no more, let us depart’. Wow! That is serious hocus-pocus; serious laying down the heaviness . . . and we’ll have to have a crack at deciphering it at the end of this post.
And so, we move onto Chapter 6, the last with which this post will deal. It continues the description of our rather haughty soul’s journey into the world beyond earthly life. The soul is now ‘The Pilgrim’ and as he waits resolutely outside ‘The Place of Union’ he is approached by ‘The Cool Gracious One’ who offers him three jars of water with which to refresh himself.
The Pilgrim now offers further credentials for his onwards passage, telling ‘The Watcher at the Gate’ that he has built up a bank of love both from those already passed over and those who remain on Earth. The Gate Guardian assesses the soul’s claim and allows our Pilgrim to pass on through.
He travels beyond ‘The Lake of Wisdom’ , past ‘The Winding Channel of Experiences’ and over ‘The Flooded Field of Reeds’ (you could make an entire D&D board from this chapter alone) until he ends up on the Eastern side of ‘The Region of Light’ where he will eventually be reborn into the higher spheres of existence.
He now stands before ‘The Womb of Heaven’ a place where the worthy are brought into union with God. He is clad in ‘The Robe of Glory’ and is welcomed in. There, the attendants praise what sounds like his intuition that he was but one part of a divided whole during his time on Earth as he seems to have understood that his thoughts and actions there would be reflected in his spirit-bound kohar half. What he did, what he thought, how he treated others, all seem to have somehow ‘fed’ his kohar in a positive way so that, when the time came that the two halves of him were reunified after physical death, the result was far greater, and more glorious, than the sum of the original parts.
And so, at this ‘Place of Union’, the Pilgrim’s kohar half approaches him, acknowledges that he has been purified, and the two halves of the one whole, journey together to ‘The Great Door that will be opened for ‘The United Being in the East’, the door that leads to the ‘Place of the One True God above all gods, whose manifestations are secret mysteries’. Crikey!
As they move forward, it is the kohar’s job to prevent its other half from being influenced by the wailings of doomed, lost souls who inhabit the ‘Region of Darkness’, a side door to which they must pass on their way. The kohar must also help its other half up the ‘Ladder of Life’ whose rungs are made more brittle by past misdemeanours (which doesn’t make much sense if the soul has already been purified etc. – but then, this part of the narrative is rather confused) so that it may ascend to ‘The Fields of Peace’ and sit amongst ‘The Glorious Ones’.
Chapter 6 ends with a kind of paean to the kohar. It is, says The Kolbrin, a kind of recorder of all our earthly memories and deeds, which it must store and bring forth when the time of reckoning comes. Finally, the text informs us that Pilgrims – who then become ‘Risen Ones’ – merge with their kohars in the same way that souls merge with a physical body at birth, and the resultant, unified being, becomes a ‘Glorious One’.
Well, well, well. What to make of all that, then? The three chapters I’ve covered off in this post are, admittedly, a bit confused, and we must remember that we are dealing here with at least two separate accounts of pretty much the same type of thing – the so-called sacred mysteries of a culture’s post-death experience dogma.
But, for what it’s worth, here are a few of my own observations:
The passage in Chapter 4 about the Earth as a kind of ‘testing’ ground is a concept that The Kolbrin and the so-called Good Religion are pretty big on throughout. Yes, it’s an attempt to answer the Big Question Why are we here?, and it can also be taken, by the cynical, as a tactic employed by various ‘powers that be’ to control populations (the ‘if-you’re-good-and-toe-the-line-and-do-what-we-say-you’ll-get-your-reward-in-heaven-even-though-you-have-a dismal-life-here type of thing), but, stripped of all the religious permutations, it can also be taken as a self-improvement mantra. Because the Earth is a testing ground. Everyday life is a testing ground. On a daily basis, you will come across people and situations that are, to coin the hackneyed phrase, sent to try you. Not rising to the bait, and rising above such people and situations, increases your worth as a human being. You become better. You become brighter. You become lighter. Give it a go. You’ll see what I mean.
On another note entirely, the passage in Chapter 5 about the rather haughty soul who gives the ferryman a hard time, rang a bit of a bell with me in relation to the earlier chapters in the Book of Gleanings about our old friend Yosira, who, we hazarded a guess, may have been none other than the real historical civiliser-personage that became known to posterity as Osiris. Could this chapter, I mused, be an ancient attempt to imagine that exalted character’s soul on its post-death journey. He was certainly haughty at times, and he would have been a bit of a cut above the rest when it came to his lifetime’s achievements (hence his aura shining more brightly than run-of-the-mill humans), and he did say that he came from Restaw (and Lord of Restaw/Restow was one of Osiris’ honorific titles). Worth considering, I think.
And what about that bit where the soul threatens to spill the beans to humanity about the names of the gods ‘that their unreality be exposed’ because he is ‘one who can dispel the clouds of illusion’?
Now, that is a bizarre passage. Is the soul saying that humanity is worshipping false gods? But that would imply that the ‘real’ gods or God are/is happy for that state to be the status quo. It may be a reference, of course, to the religious state of affairs in ancient Egypt where pantheism was the theology of the established priesthood, and any attempts to convert the state religion into a form of monotheism (such as that attempted by Akhenaten) would – and actually did, in Akhenaten’s case, lead to large scale civil unrest and disruption to the ruling dynasty. Or is he saying that humanity is not in a sufficiently advanced psycho-spiritual state to handle the concept that there are no gods, and that humans have the ability to become god-like beings themselves. Or maybe that the entire multiverse is simply one gigantic energy-transference device, and that everything is part of an eternal cosmic dance of particle disintegration and reintegration into different forms? Is he saying as ‘one who can dispel the clouds of illusion’ that, if humanity knew that, that civilisation would break down, and humans would live their lives according to the maxim of ‘nothing is true, everything is permitted – do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ sort of thing? As I say, these passages are a bit confused, so I’m not sure we can draw any conclusions from them (supposing, that is, that The Kolbrin itself is not a fabrication).
And so, onto the self-help aspects of these chapters. Well, I’ve already dealt with the ‘Earth as a testing ground’ subject above, so I guess that what we’re left with – for this post anyway – is a repetition of something I’ve highlighted before. One of the biggest lessons we humans have to learn in life is that while we observe and judge others, so we also are being observed and judged in turn. The ‘souls’ in the chapters we’ve just been through make it very clear that how we are loved and esteemed (or the opposite) by other people is a large part of the legacy we leave behind. Now, this is nothing to do with mystic mumbo-jumbo and/or the good old Law of Karma – although you can look at it in those terms if you so wish – but comes down to plain old-fashioned common sense. What do I mean by that? I mean, be self-aware. Look at yourself, your actions, your moods, your behaviour towards others and know, truly know, that you are being observed – and judged – by your fellow creatures. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (whose life you can follow on another thread on this website) used to say that everything we do, whether it is at work, in public, or even when we are at home alone, should be enacted as if the gods themselves were looking on. I’m not saying you need to believe any supernatural beings are observing your every movement, but I am saying that it pays to get into the habit of behaving decently towards ourselves and others so that being a fair-minded, forgiving, rational person becomes our default way of being. Easier said than done, I know, but if you’re willing to give it a crack, you might find that you enjoy it. Not only that, but you won’t have to bother worrying about what others think of you – because you will know inside that you’ve done what you can and have been the best person that you can be.
OK, that’s it for this post. In the next one, I’ll deal with Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of The Scared Registers and they are episodes you won’t want to miss as we get an account of initiates – obviously under the influence of mind-altering drugs – travelling out of their bodies while still alive. I hope to see you all there.
