Who is Thoth? The Egyptian God of Writing, Magic, the Moon and Fate who Became Hermes Trismegistus

the Magnificent civilization of ancient Egypt has fired the imagination for millennium and with good reason from construction projects as ancient as they are Monumental Cleopatra the seventh is closer in time to us than to their truly remote construction to the outstanding intellectual achievements which inspired the foundations of Western science mathematics and philosophy Egypt was and is long thought to be the repository of truly primeval wisdom from the storied teachings of Imhotep and Hermes Tres Magistas Renaissance and Victorian egyptomania to fanciful contemporary speculations of the akashic Records located beneath the Sphinx somehow at the center of this rightful reputation for Egyptian wisdom is the ibis-headed God Thoth this complex God perhaps originating as a moon God would become the mediator of divine disputes before settling into various roles as a god of wisdom of writing of hecca or magic of creation and of judgment he would later become synthesize with the Greek Hermes to become the syncretize Hermes trismegistus the Thrice great Hermes whose teachings formed the philosophical core of all of hermetic philosophy thus in a very important sense Thoth alone survived the decline and eventual Oblivion of classical Egyptian theology if you're interested in Magic hermetic philosophy Alchemy Kabbalah or the history of the occult to make sure to subscribe here to esoterica and also check out my other content on topics and esotericism including curated playlists also if you want to support this work of providing accessible scholarly and free free content on topics and other terrorism here on YouTube I'd hope you consider taking a look at my patreon and supporting me there with a one-time donation or you can buy some merch I have some cool black metal style shirts or you can use a super thanks option just below the video but now let's turn to Thoth the god of wisdom still abounding and astounding students down to this very day I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the arcane and history philosophy and religion [Music] [Music] it's truly difficult to appreciate the vastness and historical complexity of Egyptian civilization the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were constructed as the last woolly mammoths were disappearing their mathematical and medical texts remain shockingly modern and outstanding in ancient world they pioneered philosophical and literary forms a short story was basically invented by the ancient Egyptians and their religious literature still inspires all even this year 2023 a marvelously intact 52 foot long 16 meters copy of the Book of the Dead or the book better the book of coming fourth by day over 2 000 years old was recovered at Sakara spanning Millennia cultural upheaval a vast and shifting Geographic Empire it shouldn't surprise us that Egyptian religion was marked by its dynamism its regionally specific it often its shared common interests of motifs all over the Empire but in that specific interest that varied widely through place and time rather than striving for something like Systematic Theology that we might find in uh Paris and the 13th century thus when we explore the nature and function of a god-like Thoth we shouldn't and we won't find a single coherent myth which exhaustively describes this mysterious and frankly very powerful deity indeed what we find are more impressionistic elements that form a cloud of features which comprise the ibis-headed deity some of those elements coming into sharper Focus given the narrative or the mythical or religious function that God played in that given instance time period or Regional Locale even the exact meaning of the name Thoth is mysterious Egyptian like all languages underwent dramatic changes Through Time both in grammar and phonology thus the exact origins of thoth's name aren't clear but it seems that it might be a nisperform of a primitive word for Ibis thus he may very well be the one like an Ibis the pronunciation of his name changed much as well it was marked early on by unknown short vowels and adjectives which gave way eventually to glottal stops that voiceless pharyngeal fricative simply becoming a h sound perhaps in the New Kingdom it sounds a bit like tahata or tahati though those changes would eventually come to appear much more like thouth with the Coptic depending on the dialect being something like tahut and sahitic or the oath in boharic before being syncretized into greco-egyptian as Thoth though an Aramaic form actually preserves it as tuhut which might be a little closer with that sound but numerous Greek and Coptic transliteration survived probably the result of well Regional differences and receive pronunciation and frankly the difficulty of capturing Egyptian phonology in Greek letters they're just sounds in Egypt that we don't know what they are now and they certainly can't be captured by Greek letters so what's the Coronet pronunciation of the one like an Ibis there isn't one it depends on when you ask the Egyptian reconstruction of the Old Kingdom isn't the same as the reconstructive phonology of archaic Egyptian text like those in the pyramid text and that isn't the alterations through Egyptian phonological history and those aren't the dozen or so attempts and Regional Coptic and the coin a Greek attempts to capture an Egyptian name already incredibly ancient by that time and already having undergone numerous shifts through that period so that's going to be my justification for my own complete inconsistency in pronouncing his name throughout this video and life more generally Thoth both pick it doesn't really matter although I have to say that tahooty is kind of cute Thoth was variously depicted often reflecting the specific role he played in bat's particular instance of his manifestation thus the ibis-headed human form often holding a ah or a life symbol was very common but he just was often depicted as a wearing a lunar headdress reflecting his role as a primitive Moon God in fact the curved beak of the Ibis might itself be a connection back to this lunar role he also appeared with the atef crown or the double crown Upper and Lower Egypt this is perhaps reflecting his role as a kind of divine mediator between the brothers and set in Upper and Lower Egypt he's also familiar carrying the writing columnist or Reed pin on the black and red palette of the Scribe in his scribal mode he more often appears in his baboon form or the beautiful baboon form these two animal forms may represent an earlier period where they were Regional Gods represented by the Ibis and the baboon and they were merged together at some point in remote Antiquity his name is variously represented in the hieroglyphic writings from the scriptio Plano form stretching all the way back to the Old Kingdom and The archaeed Pyramid text to the Ibis on perch with ma'at feather which is his wife and some tech smart which becomes very popular but as a kind of balance between the pure ideogram of just the Ibis form and the phonetic representation of his name all the way down through the Middle Kingdom into the ptolemaic period there are at least a dozen different ways to write thoth's name in the Indigenous Egyptian language the origins of thothorpe well befittingly mysterious while he appears in both the myths of Osiris and Horus thus locating him within the iniotic Theology of heliopolis he also appears to have been absorbed similarly into the Theology of Memphis before settling into his own cultic Center at harmopolis though his relationship to the archaic AG Dua that is seems to be indigenous in that area isn't always clear though he does seem to rule over it at some point in the ancient and Incredibly complex myths of ancient Egypt Thoth often appears a playing a kind of supporting role but it's always a decisive supporting role Thoth recovered the rebellious daughter Eye of Ra who's sometimes taken to be transformed into his wife nehem tawi more famously when set kills his righteous brother Osiris to absurp his kingdom it's actually Toth that assists his Pious wife Isis in finding protecting and reuniting the desecrated body of Osiris and most importantly Osiris's penis using the power of hekka or ritual power or magic Thoth mummethise the first person that gets mummified is Osiris in temporary or revitalizes Osiris allowing him to produce a sun Horus with ISIS mummified penis power further the infant Horus is protected and healed by Thoth and the marshes of chimnus thus ensuring his position as a Healer God as well when the child Horus comes of age he famously contends with set both in legal physical and sexual combat it is Thoth the Lord of ma'at or Cosmic Justice that argues in defense of Horus before the great iniab it is Thoth Who restores the head of Isis with the head of a cow after she's beheaded during this famous contending though it is also most famously when set tears out the Left Eye of Horus sometimes it's both eyes but the left eye here that Thoth is most famous for its watery Discovery and restoration thus the ubiquitous depictions of Ibis holding the wedget eye a symbol of this healing powers but also of those mathematical prioris the eye actually becomes a symbol for fractions in Egyptian mathematics of course this myth is incredibly varied and complex even phos role in it is all pretty messy depending on the text you're reading I mean there's that whole sequence where Seth and Thoth or sexually assaulting each other with each other's semen each other and eventually Seth gives birth to Thoth through his forehead somehow regardless of the specifics of the myth cycle Thoth played a decisive role in the progression of this core religious narrative in Egyptian mythology and it should not be downplayed Thoth is very often thought to be a kind of lunar deity as well often identical with the moon or somehow its protector this is borne out by the great many representations of Thoth especially in his baboon form at the temples of hiya a common form of the god of the Moon as early as the pyramid text the deified Pharaoh is identified with Solara during the day and lunar Thoth through the night indeed its Thoth is often just called ya Thoth the beautiful one are the night or the silver Sun this connection with the moon also ties Thoth through calendrical issues and thus the Reckoning of both time and Fate Issues I'll come back to in just a moment while often identify with the moon especially in mortuary texts the sun and the moon are often also thought of as the The Eyes Of Heaven are the abodes of the deified Dead specifically the Sun and the Moon as they go they go through the course of which general day a given that the moon went through phases it was thought that Thoth acted as a kind of celestial physician healing the moon and restoring it to Health in its cycles of course Thoth was already associated with the medical restoration of horus's eye in the Osiris horosmith as just mentioned thus Thoth is often known as repairing healing or carrying the eye of heaven or horatha's eye as evidenced by the lunar cycles again Egyptian mythology is not marked by Systematic Theology but by freedom of Association and here the lunar Association in mortuary text is marked by a kind of identity in the Horus myth Cycles with the restoring of the Moon as the Left Eye Of Heaven itself however as I just mentioned this lunar Association also linked Thoth with the passing of time and its calendrical demarcation in fact the first month of the Egyptian calendar was named for Thoth this relationship to time was also further abstracted such that Thoth became the Lord of time the ruler of years and the reckoner of time here Thoth is thought to set the regnal periods through his coronation of the Egyptian royalty and extends the life of the Pharaoh by writing it out in his book of annals by extension of this thought Thoth becomes a kind of God of Fate not only recording the events of Life as a scribe but setting them forth by that very Act of writing sometimes on a brick that one is given birth on thus in the book of coming forth by day we see him sometimes referred to as he who announces tomorrow and gazes into the future thus making him the king of Eternity a kind of regent over time itself this ordering of time and his association with the Divine forces of Justice are ma'at in the funerary literature also extends to Thoth employing his ability to rationally order time to also laying down the very foundations of the social order or law thus he was referred to as the most ancient legislator and the Lord of laws from at least the new kingdom phos is thought to be the founder of the social order and the laws which conserve social harmony through Justice or Maat again sometimes thought of as his wife Plutarch even has Thoth in A Very Metal way creating Itself by cutting the sinus from typhonian's set and making them into the structure of social order this social ordering extends also to that most famous institution of social conservation religion here Thoth is the organizer of everything from the composition of religious liturgies to the very architecture itself of the houses of Life the vast Temple complexes of ancient Egypt in this respect he's lauded as having carefully set down the dimensions layout and the placement of those sacred shrines here sometimes at Thoth Sia thus Thoth rules not only sacred time but also Sacred Space as a kind of divine architect of course Thoth is perhaps most famous as the Divine scribe and the originator of language itself especially the sacred words and speech of the Egyptians he's known as the Lord of divine words both as the famed hieroglyphic language but also as spoken language itself imbued with the magical power or hecka as we'll soon discuss this plays a huge role in Plato's phaedrus the image of Thoth bearing the columus Of The Scribe in the a palette of the Scribe is ubiquitous and all sacred literature is a sign primarily in terms of its authorship to Thoth scribes would actually even have a small Shrine to them in their offices I guess and these Divine words carried sacred dynamism and magical efficient power sadly very little of this ancient religious literature actually comes down to us positively heartbreaking though a few fragments of one text do survive what appears to be a Priestly initiation text preserved in the demonic form of the Egyptian language now I've done a whole episode about the bat the maybe the one book of Toth that actually survives from Antiquity you can check it out and also know that the so-called book of Toth the atlantium it's just made up stuff channeled stuff from the 20th century and has no connection whatsoever to actual historical Egyptian literature we should just read the ancient Egyptians not some stuff that people in the 20th century just made up and said it comes from Thoth the Atlantean it's so hard sometimes sorry I checked out there for a minute and complete despair the Egyptians however extended thoth's knowledge of space time and language as his knowledge in a way would come all encompassing omniscient truly thus he becomes simply the one that knows and the Lord of books in which is written all knowledge and all wisdom of the cosmos in this role Thoth is often Associated as a kind of divine perceptive reason linked with the god Sia this is Imagine as a kind of vast library and Thoth is the dweller within the archive which sounds like a cool Lovecraft story but while this vast knowledge extends to the Arts and Sciences it also peers into the individual hearts of people as Thoth is referred to as the one who loves Maat in peers Into the Heart in this role he appears like yeah I keep saying most famously but most famously maybe in the afterlife in the duat with his reed pin in hand at the Judgment of the heart of the deceased against the feather of divine justice of ma'at he's weighing the heart against an aunt if the heart soaked with sin weighs more than the feather of mat the soul of the deceased is consumed by the Demonic Amit for the ancient Egyptians there was no hell it was far worse there was Annihilation and the Eternal foreclosure upon any chance of postmortem deification this enormous knowledge on thoth's part is also at least in part explained in parallel in both the Memphis Theology of batai and the ancient solar Cult of RA note that these two Cults did not always agree with each other ever thought this variously absorbed into both of these myth systems surprisingly most often as a kind of emanation of the principal deities reason or thinking or perceptive faculty in some way in this form Thoth like other primeval Gods functions as a kind of Oregon within the Divine body thus Thoth often becomes the heart of both Pata and rare depending on the text the heart again Associated for the Egyptians with cognition and perception in fact it was in this capacity as the first begotten heart of RA that the Thoth seems to have come to rule over the Primitive agniwad over at hermopolis thus eventually setting up his own cult Center there where he is said to have actually emanated the cosmic egg on the island of flame this is just all so terrifically metal the cosmic egg on the island of flame further because it's an emanation as the heart of raw that everything else comes to be Thoth is also appreciated as a kind of Creator deity as well a kind of self-cause Creator deity thus Thoth is sought to be somehow both self-caused or born as beginning itself born out of the first thought of raw but a kind of hypothesized first thought as Divine thought itself in this closeness for instance as the heart of RA it isn't surprising to see Thoth depicted upon the solar bark of millions in fact sometimes he's the Navigator of the solar bark and in this sense Thoth as Divine thought and by extension the repository of wisdom and science itself really all knowledge but also the principle of order itself is strikingly like the Greek concept of the logos as developed in both stoic and middle platonic thought and given that as we'll see it's not at all surprising that Hermes and Thoth will be heavily syncretized during the Hellenistic and ptolemaic period producing the hybrid hermesitris megistus or Hermes Thoth entity but first we have to turn to a special domain of thoth's knowledge to really appreciate that and that of course is the domain of hecca or Magic now magic is of course an incredibly fraught term and while it's being used here to translate the technical Egyptian term heka I'd just rather use the Egyptian term in this case honestly when you can use the indigenous term it's almost always better because magic often obscures more than it clarifies though it should be noted that Thoth is often referred to as great and heka learned in heka The Lord of hecca and sometimes simply as the one who performs hekka actually that term sometimes even uses the Thoth determinative thus showing his incredibly intimate relationship with this powerful force hecca is a kind of dynamism or power associated with the Divine itself it's actually attained Often by consuming it from the gods or consuming the gods themselves and has the power to both repel demonic attack in this lifetime especially in the form of sickness but it's also required in if you're going to attain deification in the form of the dead of the duat or the afterlife this force can also be employed in this lifetime for a range of purposes most famously for defending against snakes and scorpion bites and just healing more generally thought is associated quite intimately with this power his healing powers with the infant Horus also extend to him the kind of the ability to be kind of a ritual power physician or using magic as a kind of position and he employs it through his glorifications to both Comfort the gods but also teaches this power to human beings through his famed 42 volumes books of Arcane wisdom said to have been pinned by Thoth himself further because of thoth's intimate connection with language he's able to generate a whole host of charms and incantations including the famed funerary literature of ancient egyptus recitations alone are said to actually have profound power just reciting them is enough to be able to resurrect the dead or ensure the passage of the dead into the world of the Dua thus even the image of Thoth was thought to Bear the power of hecca and numerous amulets of the god abound some of the more metal ones are actually found on the evisceration scar of the Dead thus Thoth as the Ibis Splendid and hecca was also the one I call upon and who rescues me he's a salvithic figure in this way this was perhaps no more important than in the Egyptian imagination than in the incredibly perilous Journey after death in this realm at least before being reborn into the world of the duat the Egyptian texts the pyramid texts have the Ibis God actually bearing the soul of the deceased into the underworld upon his wings and the powerful incantation and map books which guide and protect the soul and are thought to actually being composed by Thoth himself so he's your he's your Guide to the afterlife in the afterlife trial it's also thought that weighs the heart against the feather of cosmic Justice or Maat and it's Thoth that records the sometimes dread verdict in fact in these moments Thoth is often described in positively fearsome language as carrying out Justice in a frighteningly vicious way however the funerary literature also makes it clear that if one feels incapable of arguing in one's defense in the underworldly trial one can appeal to Thoth Act is one's counsel or defense attorney much in the same way that he did so in the Osiris myth cycle not only a judge but also as the jackal-headed Anubis Thoth will use heka in the final aspects of the opening of the mouth ritual which inaugurates one into eternal life into the duat given all the proceeding it's completely unsurprising but as Hellenic culture interacted with Egyptian culture especially during the ptolemaic and Roman periods that the natural outcome of religious synthesis would be a syncretism of Hermes and Thoth this synthetic quasi-deity hermistress megistus or the Thrice grate combines the Hellenic god with an epithet of Thoth Thrice great sometimes he's actually eight times great but we'll go with three inappropriately becomes the teacher of a theory of Salvation by which one purifies One Soul of celestial demonic infection in this lifetime as preparation for a journey toward eternity following physical death by living a life of Purity and reverence or eusebia one is given a glimpse of the fundamental Divine and unified nature of reality which is pure knowledge or absolving hypnosis if you've ever read corporate somatica one there's your vision of course Hermes trismagistus would also be associated with a wide range of occult knowledge practices and a college an occult Sciences during this period as well including especially magic Alchemy and astrology all of which were taken to be divinely revealed primordial wisdom if you're curious some of this indigenous Egyptian magic is probably recorded in the Demonic spells of the Greek magical papyri along with something like manuals of Egyptian Alchemy which survive in texts like zosimos he was an Egyptian priest along with Egyptian astrology importantly was all incorporated into the wider Hellenistic practices of the day now I've done lots of episode on the texts and teachings of the hermetic philosophy and the technical hermetica if you want to check out those as well in my hermetic philosophy playlist however this period of Greco-Roman Egyptian synthesis would also Mark the Twilight of the traditional Egyptian world through the 5th Century of the Common Era most Egyptian temples would be closed and the old religion forbidden and eventually forgotten as Christianity achieved religious hegemony only in the remote border region with Nubia did the old religion hold out a bit longer however even out there its days were numbered at the temple complex at felai was the last known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics written around 394 of the Common Era along with the last demonic inscription written actually in 452 then by order of the Christian Justinian the last Temple of Isis was closed in 537 generally thought to Mark the end of traditional indigenous Egyptian religious practice less than 100 years later the Conquering Muslim armies would end Roman rule there as well with Islam becoming the Prevailing Faith of the region down to this day but Thoth may very well laugh last merged with Hermes he would then become fused with Enoch and Idris in the abrahamic world and his primeval wisdom would survive under a new religious cloak in the Latin escalapias and Technical manuals of the occult Sciences he would survive into the Latin West smuggled right into the heart of Christianity sometimes even thought to be the teacher of Moses sometimes thought to be Moses himself that idea goes back to Art upon us with the Muslim conquest of Constantinople the entirety of surviving hermetic philosophy will begin to make its way into the Latin West and this fascination with the ancient even primordial wisdom of Thoth and his many guises has not abated since in this way Thoth of all the Egyptian gods has truly survived into a glorious and seemingly eternal afterlife if you want an accessible and reliable introduction real introduction to Egyptian mythology I have to recommend the text of that name by Geraldine pinch not only for its content but also for its extensive further recommended readings on a range of topics from further introductory material to genuine specialist deep Dives also if you're more curious about the world in which Hermes survived into the Arabic context Von bottles texts the Arabic Hermes is fantastic and in fact I want to do an entire episode on just how Hermes is going to survive specifically in the Islamic world and therefore Toth actually has a second life in that context as well also if you want to Deep dive just on Thoth an oldie but Goldie if Thoth the Hermes of Egypt by Patrick Boylan surprisingly this book is over a hundred years old I think it's first printed in 1922 and I think it Remains the only major text on Thoth but it is a Powerhouse of information though it does assume a significant degree of specialization like he just quotes things in hieroglyphics and good luck of course a volume that's over 100 years old now scholarship has progressed well beyond that you know that copy of EA Wallace budges Book of the Dead you got on your shelf there that's great for the plates but you should just ignore the translation at this point but boylan's book is still cheap and well worth getting in reprints it's a great text I'd go beyond it but still there's no major Thoth monograph that I know of so it's well worth checking out until next time I'm Dr Justin Sledge and thank you for watching esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion

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Length: 32min 35sec (1955 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023