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By Wayne Purdin
The Pharaoh Akhenaten has been associated with a long tradition of adepts who taught the solar mysteries—from Thutmose III (an embodiment of Kuthumi) to Moses, to Pythagoras (another embodiment of Kuthumi), Jesus, and Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov. [Did you desire to add the marks to Omraam’s name? If so, do add them.] This article focuses on Akhenaten and the mysteries of the Ma’at (righteousness) and the Aten (a sun disk representing the spiritual Sun), and connects his unfulfilled mission with the activities of certain spiritual communities, particularly The Hearts Center.
Ma’at and Ma’aten
The inspiration for this article began with the thought that the Ma’at might be a shortened word for Ma’Aten. Even though the hieroglyph for Ma’at bears no resemblance to the hieroglyph for Aten, Akhenaten was known to spell out the name Ma’at letter by letter. He also had as much reverence for Ma’at as he did for Aten. This would explain why Akhenaten did not banish the goddess Ma’at with the other false gods in his attempt to clear the way for the establishment of his religion of the one true God, Aten.
Ma’at is the most important and central concept in all of the Egyptian Mysteries. The goddess Ma’at was called the daughter or soul of the sun god Ra or Re, an earlier form of Aten. Thus, Ma’at is an aspect of the one God. Her name means “straight.” Thus she is the “straight and narrow path” or “the order that is the basis of creation without which the creation would be chaos.” Thus, Ma’at on Earth is the righteousness of a golden age society when everyone lives in peace and prosperity, in truth, freedom, justice, and love. Queen Hapshepsut, who along with Thutmose III, Akhenaten’s great-grandfather, instituted the priesthood of Aten and the mystery school of the Therapeutae in Heliopolis, built a temple to Ma’at at Karnak. The throne name she adopted was Ma’atkare, which means “Ma’at is the soul of Ra.”
In the tomb of the noble Ramose, there are two paintings of Akhenaten, side by side. One shows him seated on his throne with the goddess Ma’at standing behind him. The other shows Akhenaten and Nefertiti standing under the many-handed rays of Aten, as in the above illustration. I believe that with these two paintings Akhenaten was showing that Ma’at was the loving, life-giving aspect of Aten, or Ma’Aten.
Ma’Aten is a term I coined for the feminine, nurturing, or love aspect of the sun, which is just as important as the power/wisdom aspect that I call Ra’Aten. In Sanskrit, Ma is the seed syllable for the feminine energy current, and Ra is the syllable for the masculine energy current. Chanting “Rama” can help balance these currents and improve health.
In Akhenaton’s time, the Aten was considered a minor god, and Amen, the major sun god was a masculine god. Even the priests of Aten worshipped Aten as the masculine god Ra. So there was an imbalance in society—there was too little of the feminine qualities (feeling, culture, fairness, and compassion) and too much of the masculine qualities (doing, commerce, war, and intellect) in society. Religion and government were both patriarchal, and they interfered with each other, disrupting the threefold social organization. Priests and officials were men and gained power through cunning, deceit, and power plays.
But Akhenaten was above all that. All he cared about was art, music, truth, family life, and the worship of his beloved Aten, whom he depicted as a sun disk with rays, some of which ended in hands that are definitely feminine and that caressed him, Nefertiti, and their daughters like a loving mother. Some of the hands held the anhk, which is what the goddess Ma’at is shown holding. So Ma’at is not only the loving part of the Aten, but the life-giving aspect, for the ankh is the symbol of the life force.
Akhenaten’s Spiritual Revolution
Akhenaton initiated a change in the religious climate from a fear-based polytheism to a more devotional religion, which was free of graven images, obsession with the afterlife, and magic. The new climate emphasized reverence for sunlight and cleanliness, and simple burial. It allowed ordinary citizens to freely worship in open-air temples with offerings of fruits, flowers and incense, as was done in the original solar religion of Egypt, and before that on Atlantis and Lemuria.
According to my theory, the replacement of the fear-based religion of Amen [This is the first time you mention Amen. Who is he?] with the love-based religion of Aten would have been phase 1 of Akhenaten’s plan to restore Ma’at. For even if the people had accepted Aten as the one true God, they would likely have worshipped the Ra’Aten, or masculine aspect, as did the priest of Heliopolis. Thus, Phase 2 would have taught them another new paradigm of seeing God as feminine. But unfortunately, the people never accepted his new religion because they were too dependent on the superstitions of their pantheistic religion.
The Solar Mysteries Survived
But Akhenaten taught the deeper mysteries of the sun in his mystery school, and the solar mysteries survived through initiates at Heliopolis and through initiates like Joseph, who archeologist Robert Feather claims was Akhenaten’s vizier Nakhte and who escaped with other Hebrews to Elephantine Island in Southern Egypt. About 130 years later, descendants of Joseph joined Moses, who, according to the Egyptian historian Manetho was educated and initiated at Heliopolis. Manetho wrote that Moses “became a High Priest of the Brotherhood. The dogma of an ‘only God,’ which Manetho taught, was the Egyptian Brotherhood’s interpretation and teaching of Akhenaton. The traditions he established in this manner were known completely to only a few of them and were preserved in the mysteries of the secret societies, the Therapeutae of Egypt and the Essenes.” [reference for this quote?]
God wanted all the Hebrews to know the mysteries, but they were not ready to receive them. The ascended master Lord Ling, who was Moses, said in a dictation through Elizabeth Clare Prophet, “These tablets I did break out of rage toward a people who would enter into the golden-calf civilization and materialism while I would commune upon the mountain with God. Therefore, for the stubbornness of that people, God did then inscribe but ten commandments to be kept. And the path of the Mystery School that had been inscribed [on the first set of tablets] was no longer [written] in form.” [reference?]
So the sacred mysteries were on the first set of tablets. It’s clear from Exodus 34:27-29 that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments. God did not engrave them with lightning bolts, as was depicted in Cecil B. DeMill’s movie. But God, through Moses’ hand, wrote the mysteries on the first set of tablets and the commandments on the second set.
The Egyptian people were not ready for the mysteries either. The Egyptian Mysteries were reserved for initiates and the royal family and not given to the common people. Instead the people were given the 42 Declarations of Ma’at, which include “I have not stolen,” “I have done no murder or harm,” and “I have not told lies.” It has been confirmed by many scholars that the 42 Declarations of Ma'at are the original source of the Ten Commandments.
The Mystery of the Father/Mother God
So if the Ten Commandments were simplified and moralistic forms of the mysteries, what is the mystery that goes with the fifth commandment: “Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee”? I suspect it is the mystery of the Father/Mother God, Alpha and Omega, the balance of yin and yang in every aspect of creation. Joshua David Stone in The Universal Laws of God wrote that the higher meaning of this commandment is to “Honor the Father/Mother God. It is time to properly honor the Divine Mother and the goddess energies…. Honor Helios and Vesta, our solar Divine Mother and Father.”
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that “Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. The FATHER is Eternal Life; the one Mind; the divine Principle, commonly called God. And the MOTHER is the divine and eternal Principle; Life, Truth, and Love.”
Another translation of Ma’at is “truth.” Akhenaten wrote that the Aten was “Father and Mother of all creation whose rays were beauteous with love and lays them upon me in life and length of days for ever and ever.” [reference?] This is the Ma’Aten, or Ma’at, that Akhenaten came to restore and that God desired the Hebrews to worship through the 5th Mystery so that they could get out of their patriarchal mindset.
The Mysteries Are Being Taught Today
Fast forward 3,200 years and we still to some degree [“pretty much” seems a bit slang in comparison to the tone of the rest of your piece, Wayne.] live in a patriarchal society. But in the past 100 years, there have been great advancements made in women’s rights, and more feminine qualities have been incorporated into society. Also, many mysteries of the sun have been rediscovered in the last hundred years or so. At the beginning of the 20th century, the masters Peter Deunov and Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov taught people the love aspect of the sun through attending the sunrise with great devotion.
Then in the 1960s, archeologists Gene Savoy discovered the solar teachings of the ancient pre-Incan civilization of Peru and that of the Essenes and codified them into the science of cosolargy, which is basically the power/wisdom aspect of the sun. From 1995 to 2010, sun yogi Hira Ratan Manek (HRM) was inspired by the teachings of the Jain saint Mahavira to practice sungazing and travel [instead of “go around”] the world teaching it. However he taught only that the sun was a power source that can fuel the mind as a supercomputer and enable the body to live without food.
Finally, in 2005, The Hearts Center adopted the solar teachings of Master Omraam, and these teachings and new revelations about the sun from the Solar Logoi, Helios, and other masters have become more prominent in our community. And it’s not surprised because many members of this community were with Akhenaten in Egypt. On December 31, 2006, Helios told everyone gathered for an outdoor HeartStream in Phoenix that many of us there had been in Ahkenaton’s mystery school in Egypt and understood the worship of the sun and the spiritual Sun behind the sun.
And on September 26th, 2010, Master Omraam said in a discourse through David, “There have been spiritual communities in the past that have understood the science of solar gazing, solar bathing, solar communion. Many of you on this call, in fact, over 90% of us have lived in one or another of these spiritual communities in past lifetimes. That is why you resonate with this teaching, this understanding, and your inner vows to bring back this teaching, to assist the lifestreams on Earth to make the shift into a greater level of God beingness that comes when we understand our divine nature and when we engage God through meditation upon the sun and the Sun behind the sun.” One interesting fact I discovered in connection with this quote is that Akhenaten and his followers called their religion “The Teaching.”
Helios also said during his HeartStream, “It is time for mankind to understand the sacred science of sungazing and of corollary sciences whereby they may have greater healing of body, mind and soul through attuning to the warmth of the inner richness of the heart, center of all life.” This heart-centeredness is the love of the Ma’Aten that must counterbalance the head-centeredness of modern society and restore Ma’at. Akhenaten said in “The Hymn to Aten” that the Aten was in his heart. As Akhenaten developed his religion, he began to call the Aten by the appellation: “the warmth that is in the Aten.” According to Omraam, the warmth of the sun is the love aspect of the sun, the part that we pray to.
Vesta’s Solar Rosary, a Prayer Ritual
David Christopher Lewis has said that Vesta’s Solar Rosary is the most powerful prayer ritual of The Hearts Center. I believe it is because when you give it with great devotion, you establish a heart tie with Vesta, who is the Ma’Aten, and thereby restore the Ma’at in your life and your sphere of influence. In the preamble to Vesta’s Solar Rosary, we say, “Through this Solar Rosary, Vesta’s light shines through me each day. I am expanding God’s kingdom upon Earth as I assist in the enlightenment and freedom of all sentient beings evolving here.” This is the Ma’at–the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (enlightenment and freedom) that Jesus spoke about in his parables. This is also the “high ideal” that master Omraam spoke about in many of his lectures.
Omraam wrote in A New Dawn, “The Kingdom of God can become a tangible reality. First and foremost it has to reign in our ideas, our thoughts, and it is on that level that I can already see it. It is beginning. We are not the only ones who think and feel as we do; thousands of people in the world—many more than you imagine—share our ideas and desires. The kingdom of God is finding its way into the minds and hearts, and even into the behavior, the way of life, of many; for the kingdom of God is an attitude, a state of consciousness, and a way of living and working. Of course the kingdom of God has not yet come for the whole of humanity, but it will, for it is contagious. This is what Jesus was saying in the parable about the leaven in the dough.... Human beings, too, can be a leaven in the mass. If we are truly a spiritual leaven, the whole of humanity will be influenced simply by our presence, by contact with us. It depends on the intensity of our light, the intensity of our love, and the strength of the life we live. But in order to achieve this, of course, we need a teaching, a system, and methods. This is the crux of the matter: we must learn to live a new life with a new understanding based on and nourished by a new, intense love. In this new life everything becomes easier; everything can be brought into harmony, and we can become a beneficial, constructive factor for the whole of humanity.”
Thus, Akhenaten’s vision of the Ma’at, or the kingdom of God and his righteousness, will not be fulfilled just by our visualizations or reciting Vesta’s Solary Rosary. It will come about by our loving words and actions. As Egyptologist, Dr. Thierry Benderitter wrote, “We ‘bring into being’ Ma'at by the divine recitation of prayers in an unceasing effort where we listen to each other, where we act on each other’s behalf. Thus social life and cosmic life intertwine: they are the reflection one of the other.”