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Thoth and that

  
  

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Quantum
11:09 / 17.09.07
"Because Thoth is divine intelligence, his "ape," the distorted image of divine intelligence, is human intelligence, the logic and reason of the human mind."

I think the Ape of Thoth is a Thelemic thing (check this thelemic text search engine out), if I remember my Budge the baboon was associated with him just like the Ibis because it was a night animal...wait...OK check this;

Thoth was usually depicted as an ibis headed man or as a full ibis, or with the face of a dog-headed baboon and the body of a man or, again, as a full dog-headed baboon. The ibis, it is thought, had a crescent shaped beak, linking the bird to the moon. The dog-headed baboon, on the other hand, was a night animal that was seen by the Egyptians who would greet the sun with chattering noises each morning just as Thoth, the moon god, would greet Ra, the sun god, as he rose."

The thing is, because he was worshipped for thousands of years and underwent change as time went on (not to mention geographically, local changes by local people) it's tricky to pin down a definitive Tehuti. Like all the Egyptian pantheon, you have to untangle a million conflicting strands of story to get an idea of what his worship was like. You can as easily equate him to Prometheus as you can to Odin as you can to Mercury, depending on which aspects you emphasise.
I always consider Thoth to be secretly a god of puns. I bet he loves cunning wordplay and crap jokes.
 
 
ghadis
11:10 / 17.09.07
Thoth was commonly depicted as a baboon. This image of him is actually older than the Ibis and goes way back to pre-dynastic times (although Thoth as Ibis does appear in early periods it is more common and widespread in later periods).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:11 / 17.09.07
The ape of the dead - great job title - A'an (Aa'n? I imagine it's googlable) is, I think, often represented as an incarnation of Thoth. Is that the one? Next question would be what kind of apes the Egyptians would regularly encounter.

However, I challenge the idea that a dog-headed baboon is a baboon. This seems disrespectful to baboons without dogs' heads, who work very hard to keep babooning a viable trade in the modern world.

Ghadis, could you fill us in on your undertanding of Thoth and his association with magic? This sounds late to me, but I am a big cynic.
 
 
Quantum
11:12 / 17.09.07
I was going to say the dog-headed baboon Thoth is older than the Ibis, but I couldn't recall if my memory was correct- ta Ghadis. What do you think about all the different gods changing over the course of their lengthy worship?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:14 / 17.09.07
Life Critic: while I kind of less-than-three you for your commitment to avoiding and challenging assumptions about gender, I think you're pretty safe in using the male pronoun for Thoth.

We are not personally aquainted (I'm a bit of a pantheon homebody and have no pressing need to go bothering the Netjeru), but He's referred to as male pretty much everywhere in the literature, and I have never seen His modern-day worshippers describe Him as other than male. If this was an ordinary person and all his biographers referred to him as male, all his mates referred to him as male, the people who hung out with him and loved him unconditionally told you he was male, there's no real need to keep on using ze.
 
 
Quantum
11:15 / 17.09.07
He also appears as a baboon when he is A'an, the god of equilibrium. In the form of A'ah-Djehuty he took a more human-looking form. wikipedia

Magic and writing were pretty much siblings to the Egyptians weren't they? Name magic and Ren Hekau and all that, I thought his association with language included magic.
 
 
slythey tove
11:34 / 17.09.07
Thoth is also often said to correspond with Hanuman but from my understanding of Hanuman I cant see the connection.

The aspect of Hanuman i am familiar with is more of a righteous guardian archetype
 
 
Pyewacket The Elder
11:36 / 17.09.07
Hi guys, many thanks for all the informative responses - Just got back from a sojourn away and am now reading through the posts and will be back with full responses later this evening.

Some quick points however:

Apologies to anyone irked by the opening post especially Aunt B. - I accept that this could be better worded and any helpful/useful comments to that end are more than welcome.

One of the things that I'm trying to get my noggin around is a comment by Crowley in his instructions on invoking Gods in which he says that this methodology is perhaps not appropriate for 'intellectual' gods such as Thoth. So if not that way then what?

I've seen his invocation to Thoth hermes and Like it all except for the Odin mention which kind of jars a bit and feels forced.

Secondly I have tabulated all the typical 777 info based on the Thoth relationship with the Magus Path simply because is the most resonant with the intention of this endeavour. Despite this I would prefer to base much of the building blocks upon actual academic knowledge about Thoth which is a little disparate and inconsistent in any concrete forms on the internet. If anyone knows a well researched book that would be ace.

I'd prefer to keep silent, if that's cool, about the actual intention itself until completion however it involves invocation of Thoth for all the usual reasons to invoke a God/ess and that is where your considered and wide ranging knowledge would be a tremendous help.
 
 
Pyewacket The Elder
11:44 / 17.09.07
Life Critic: while I kind of less-than-three you for your commitment to avoiding and challenging assumptions about gender, I think you're pretty safe in using the male pronoun for Thoth.

In my readings there are a few refernces to both as 'Self-created' and somewhat asexual however of course he is often paired up with Maat or (excuse wrongness as I can't check the reference right now) Shemesh who are identified as female. Not that that means anything particuarly of course.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:26 / 17.09.07
I've seen his invocation to Thoth hermes and Like it all except for the Odin mention which kind of jars a bit and feels forced.

Hrrm. Have to concur here. I'm very leery of the way that Crowley's magick encourages the drawing of one-one correspondances between deities who happen to have a few traits in common.

As I understand it, the invocation calls upon certain of the sacred Mysteries represented by those Gods, treating the Gods as interfaces for those mysteries. This is not unproblematic. Sure, Thoth, Hermes and Odin are all Gods associated with writing and magic, Thoth and Odin being especially associated with writing as magic (tho' I must cop to weak Egypt-fu here and admit that I'm going by modern writings) but as described in Their own lore, They are Beings with radically different characters. Odin has some pretty scary attributes and I would caution people against working with Him or namechecking Him in an invocation unless they'd done plenty of homework first. But then my model of deity is probably a lot different to Uncle Al's.
 
 
ghadis
12:56 / 17.09.07
Ancient Egyptian literature is full of puns and tricky wordplay so i reckon you're spot on with that aspect Quantum. Whilst i'm slightly skeptical about the veracity of slytheys Truth/Thoth connection those types of language games are common and worth playing around with i'd say. One of the reasons i still enjoy dipping in Gerald Masseys books occasionally.

As to Thoth and magic. It's a tricky one because it kind of implies that the ancient egyptians had a concept of magic which is similer to what we have which i don't think is the case but there are definate conections. He's seen as Lord of Secrets which implies a connection to the occult. There is also a story from the Middle Kingdom which is usually translated as 'The Magician Djedi' where he hands out various powers and knowlege to his followers.He also appears in some books on Ra's barque accompanied by the deified aspects of Heka (the nearest concept to our idea of magic) Sia (perception) and Hu (spoken word).

Generally though, God of Wisdom and the inventor of the written word although the earliest mentions of him relate to his Moon God aspect. 'Lord of all time'. He invented the calendar and was resposible for the passing of time. This ties into his connection to mathematics, astonomy and accounting etc. Handles the weighing of the heart bit in various texts. God of medicine and healing. He is also something of a Fixer. Lost your eye in a fight? Give Thoth a call. Blood crazed rampaging goddess on the loose? Give Thoth a call.

Sometimes seen as the son of Ra, sometimes the son of Horus and Set (from whos forehead he was born after Set mistakingly ate some lettuce dressed with Horus semem).

In Hermopolis he was a creater deity who emmerged out of the primeval goo to create the Ogdoed and then the rest of the world. As Scrotox says, he was often paird up with Maat or Shemesh or Seshat the Goddess of scribes and writing but i think these pairings are from a later period when the egyptians went through a phase of marrying off all their deities like some mad mythological dating agency.

I particually like the idea that he got his baboon form because when the egyptians looked at the moon they saw a baboons face where we see the man in the moon. No way of knowing whether that is true or not but a lovly idea i think.

As to books Scrotox i'd say that the first place to start would be either this or this with one of these
 
 
Janean Patience
13:11 / 17.09.07
Haus: The ape of the dead - great job title - is, I think, often represented as an incarnation of Thoth.

One possible recent manifestation was in the first series of The Mighty Boosh, as seen here:

  
 
Pyewacket The Elder
19:03 / 17.09.07
Ahh the Boosh!

Aunt B / Roy - It would be nice to see this thread be directed towards a solid summation of Thoth related thought.

Was there not some kind of Barb magick site? Sorce Forge? Why not distill all the info from a full thread into a profile of sorts for different gods? I am doing this anyway so if this be deemed a productive idea then I'd be stoked to be involved. Other than that please feel free to reword the title of the thread as you see fit.

Anyway, I didn't like the opening post because it comes over a little as fishing for other people's weird experiences, and I feel the net renders such experiences pretty kind of ... empty.

Roy - Sure it may seem like fishing for weird experiences but the intention is only to get some idea of the territory I am entering but you raise a valid point worth stating: It should be a given that no one need post any information they are not comfortable with revealing for whatever reason.

Slythey tove - thanks for your personal experience. There is certainly room for the magical connections as well as the purely academic. Your experience with the Ibis - where was this?!?

Life critic - Hmmm why shouldn't I invoke Thoth? Good question. I've had experience with only one previous God (Tyche) and I think I wasn't getting something right by the end of that and so I've devoured a great deal of the Temple threads about deity work. Aunt B's writings on Loki love gave plenty of reasons to be at least a little careful and respectful as well as being highly useful guides to the correct behaviour and attitudes. Roy's link to the Phil Hine article was useful in this regard also.

Haus - This info on pronunciation is fantastic. I've seen a little on pronunciation but the explanation made me scratch my head saying "whu?" - yours didn't. Do you have a particular source that you use and if so where should I look?

Okay Thoth and that...
More often depicted with the scribes writing instruments or the phoenix wand and ankh here is a great image of Thoth weilding two Uraei:



The two Uriae 'wands' (resonant somewhat later with the Hermes syncretism) appear to be representations of royalty and divinity and, according to Geraldine Pinch in her book Magic in Ancient Egypt, representative of the goddess Weret Hekau.

If I'm not mistaken Thoth is feeding an Ankh (immortality?) to the deceased. I'm beavering through the Book of the Dead in hope of getting some sure knowledge of what I'm looking at.

Methodologies:
I have been looking at Egyptian methods of magick,
Largely from the Pinch book, as being suggestive of possible parts of the ritual/s. She states that spells were often drawn, or tattooed, on the body of a person and this seems an excellent idea that will readily work within ritual space.

She points to spells that were written into wall reliefs placed above a water bowl. You could gain the power of the spell by pouring a libation over the spell and then drinking the fluid collected in the bowl.

Aunty B? - I remember reading a post of yours about the burning of Runes and drinking the resulting ashes - was this with the intention of learning them or to some other end? Have you used this methodology for the casting of specific spells?

Okay more later. Thank you all for all the great information coming.
 
 
Fritz K Driftwood
05:57 / 20.09.07
Aunt Beast - A note on Uncle Al's syncretism with regards to Thoth/Hermes/Odin: the parallels between Hermes (actually, Mercury) and Odin go back to Tacitus' "Germania" at least. Julius Caesar calls Mercury the "deum maxime" of the Gaulic tribes. And why wouldn't he? Odin bears more of a resemblance to Hermes/Mercury than to Zeus or Apollo. I think Crowley was simply using past comparisons when he found them useful.

Ghadis/Scrotox - Thoth is the one who taught the magic words/symbols/hieroglyphs to Isis and so enabled her to resurrect Osiris. If resurrecting the dead isn't magical....I've been told that his priests used honey & said "Sweet is the truth" as a greeting to one another(although their English was TERRIBLE!). Does this sound right to you? I haven't been able to confirm this and the person who told me about it, could be "inspired" or could be a nut, the jury is still out.

slythey - Really? Hanuman? Don't get me wrong, Hanuman is great, but I would think that Ganesha (OM GOM) is a better equivalent, since they are both the scribes of their respective pantheons, not to mention other corresponding traits.
 
 
Quantum
08:03 / 20.09.07
Was there not some kind of Barb magick site? Sorce Forge?

You're thinking of the magick wiki by Elseware, sorceryforge.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:34 / 20.09.07
the parallels between Hermes (actually, Mercury) and Odin go back to Tacitus' "Germania" at least... I think Crowley was simply using past comparisons when he found them useful.


Yeah... but uncritically taking on board Tacitus' assertions about Odin being synonymous with Mercury, as referenced in his Germania, is a bit like the debate going on in another thread at the moment about uncritically accepting Herodotus' ideas about Babylonian sacred prostitutes.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:36 / 20.09.07
Indeed. It was the Roman way of thinking that all Gods were basically their own pantheon being worshipped under different names, hence Tacitus' referring to Odin as "Mercurius Germanicus." Whilst such historical records are a useful source of lore for the reconstructionist, looking to an invading culture for a sophisticated understanding of the local religious beliefs is likely to prove unhelpful.

Anyhow, sorry. Back to Thoth.
 
 
ghadis
10:49 / 20.09.07
I've been told that his priests used honey & said "Sweet is the truth" as a greeting to one another.

Well honey was used a huge amount in medicine due in part to it's antbacterial properties (it was also used a lot in ritual, perfume, body cleaning, cookery etc etc). I use it a lot in my own practice and it does go down particualy well with Thoth i've found. Get fresh honeycomb if you can.

I haven't heard the "Sweet is the truth" greeting before. It sounds like maybe it's a quite late, hermetic statment to me but i'm really not sure. Got a nice Thoth ring to it though, the concept of Truth being connected to Thoth in many ways such as Maat etc. One phrase you do see a lot in texts is Maa Kheru (loosely transliterated as im not sure of keystrokes) which is usually translated as 'True of Voice' or 'Justified' and is often used as a term for someone who has passed through judgement in the otherworld of which Thoth plays a large role.

In some versions of the 'Opening of the Mouth' ritual Thoth is asked to bring Heka to the individual (or statue, deity or temple for that matter), to fill the mouth with Heka after the mouth has been opened and the bindings removed by Ptah.
 
 
ghadis
11:16 / 20.09.07
If you're interested,one way to translate "Sweet is the truth" into middle egyptian would be... ndjm iw bw maa

Thoth is the one who taught the magic words/symbols/hieroglyphs to Isis and so enabled her to resurrect Osiris. If resurrecting the dead isn't magical

Thats kind of one of the points i was getting at. What may seem magical to us may be looked at in a completely different way to the ancient egyptians. The dead resurrecting is seen all the time in nature, the nile moving through its cycles, crops reappearing, the sun dying each night to be born anew each morning.

It may not have been all, 'Oh my God! Day of the Dead! Quick lets barricade ourselves into the nearest pyramid!'
 
 
ghadis
14:55 / 20.09.07
Archabyss' mention of the Szpakowska book in the 'Recommend me a book...' thread has reminded me of somthing about honey. In the various dream interpretation books used for divination , to dream of honey was to be seen as recieving a gift or message direct from the gods. This was because honey was a pure emanation of a god. I vaguely remember a story about Ra weeping and his tears turning into bees as they fell to earth. Anyway, maybe be heading off topic slightly..
 
 
ghadis
15:53 / 20.09.07
If you're interested,one way to translate "Sweet is the truth" into middle egyptian would be... ndjm iw bw maa

Actually bw maa iw ndjm would be more grammatically correct. I'm fussing because i really like the phrase the more i think about it.
 
 
grant
17:46 / 20.09.07
I'd heard the Thoth/ibis link was made because ibises dip their beaks into the ground with a kind of dip-dip-dip-dip-dip motion much like a scribe dipping into ink.

Have no idea who thought that one up, but I like thinking about it while watching the ibises in my yard.
 
  

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