Book(s) of the Dead

A few years ago I went to an exhibition at the British Museum about the Egyptian Book of the Dead; you know, the maguffin from the first Mummy Movie?

Well, I was wrong about that. I’d say there were two main takeaways from that exhibition. The first was the the ancient Egyptian afterlife was like the bloody Krypton Factor (or for a slightly less dated reference maybe Fort Boyard or Ninja Warrior) every step of the afterlife seemingly comes with a particular spell or poem or gift that needs to be bestowed to whatever gatekeeper in order to progress. Conveniently, if you were reasonably well off you could purchase a book of the dead to be buried with that would give you a crib sheet to all of these challenges for once you were beyond this mortal coil.

There was never one single Book of the Dead; if anything it seems like a fascinating area of academic study to see how these various documents changed over the years, what parts were added, replaced, edited; seemingly if you were on a budget you might get only a bare bones version and I guess still have to hope you can get by whatever other afterlife perils await on your own.

To look at a book like this, or indeed any book, as a thing in and of itself is only ever half the story. A book, especially one that has passed through multiple sets of hands, eyes and minds, is a reflection of everything that has led to it’s current incarnation. In magical practice this is an aspect of the balance between the craft as passed down artifact versus the craft as a living practice.

When entering an initiatory space, a craft, a practice, one isn’t necessarily receiving a perfect divine text crafted verbatim by divine entities, the same way that those who teach us are not perfect copies of those who taught them. A book, its writer, and the journey it has taken is just as much a thing to study as what is actually written on the pages.