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Listervelt> Now, when you say that the Zodiac today, people do not, see it as coming from the African.

Dr.

Finch> They don't see anything.

<Mind> Dr.

Finch> No.

That's part of the, that's part of the corruption.

That's part of the distortion.

That's part of the reason why people, things are in such a state is because they lost the original essence of all of these things.

Not only do they not know that all this stuff's coming from Africa, they don't want to know.

They get mad at the idea.

Ticks them off.

They don't want to know.

They'd rather not know.

They'd rather wallow in their ignorance.

And it's more important for them not to know, to think that, that, that this could not possibly done from the African.

(Listervelt starts to speak) Dr.

Finch> To...if, I say to separate themselves and distance themselves to, move away from that which gave rise to them, it's in a way it's kind of matricide, if you will.

So therefore, the fox is a type of Set.

the rabbit we've already described as being Osiris.

So, the Brer Rabbit stories which pit him against, and usually winning against the fox, is nothing more than a late rendition of the Set and Osiris and Set story.

Listervelt> Good evening, and welcome to For the People and the second part of our interview with Dr.

Charles Finch on Gerald Massey's Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World.

Scientists tell us that Africans have been on the planet Earth for some 250 thousand years, and that White people have been on Earth for only 50 thousand years.

Why, many of us believe that Black men and women had to wait for Europeans to discover God, and intelligence is one of the modern mysteries of the world.

In this segment on Ancient Egypt, The Light of the World, Dr.

Finch discusses some of the ancient African Egyptian religious ideas and compares them with biblical concepts.

We'll look at the use of animals as symbols in ancient Egyptian thought when we hear the names Isis, Horus, and so forth, we think of gods.

But what did these names represent in the African way of thinking?

Dr.

Finch> Egyptians call them neters.

What they were, they were the principles of God.

They were the active principles of God in the universe and in nature.

In a sense, they were, if you will, the personification of the powers of God who were given names, histories, and, if you will, human or really animal form as sym- symbolically given certain forms to manifest the attributes or manifestations or personifications of God.

Egyptians always believe in one single divine creator who was unnamed and unnamable, unknown and unknowable, who was not created and yet created all.

And these neters who, who we've named as Osiris, Isis, Set, Horus were personifications or manifestations or emanations from this one original deity, who was, who was all and who was one.

Listervelt> What do we mean by zoo-typical and anthropomorphic representation?

Dr.

Finch> Those are words that Massey liked to use.

Zoo-typical means that the Egyptians used animals to personify certain symbolic meanings.

Now, what this meant in later times is that Greeks and Romans and even today, the Egyptians were accused of worshiping animals.

No, they did not worship animals.

Animals, the animals were used to personify or symbolize the power inherent in certain deities.

For example, the hawk, the golden hawk was a figure of Ra and Horus, because the golden hawk was a symbol of the sun, because of his color, and because of his ability to soar high up in the heavens like the sun, so it became emblematic of the power of the sun.

The, what is it?

Oh, yeah, the, the hippopotamus, the female hippopotamus was an image of the Great Mother.

Why?

Because if you look at the hippopotamus, the hippopotamus is a big obese animal.

And so it was the female hippopotamus was the image of maternity or motherhood.

The tree, the tree was another maternal figure or maternal image.

Why?

Because the trees spreading branches that protected, because it gave fruit, which meant that it nourished.

So they used a tree to describe or to represent the maternal principle in nature.

So this is what, these zoo-typical, zoo meaning animal, these zoo- typical forms were used to merely express the powers and essence of God and nature.

Listervelt> Now anthropomorphic?

Dr.

Finch> Anthropomorphic merely means, taking a cosmic or celestial or divine, principle and making a human form out of it.

Listervelt> No, which was first in the, in the African word?

Dr.

Finch> No, no questions.

Zoo-typical.

And there's a good reason for that.

If you look at when these nature symbols began, long before they even got to Egypt, before Egypt sort of codified them and perfected them, they had their beginnings in the Inner African homeland.

Why?

Because you have to understand this is a time of the childhood of the human race, not only childhood physically, but these sort of psychological childhood or infancy of the human race.

So, in a sense, human psychology or the human's mind or psyche was, in a way, a Tabula rasa, kind of a clean slate.

And, in some ways, really the only thing that existed of a psychic nature was instincts, that had evolved over a period of 4 million years.

So as man now developed, had the capacity for self-reflection and for, being able to reflect on the world around him, and I use that word, him only in the generic sense, they had they, they took what was around them in nature, the experiences of nature, the facts of nature, to create concepts that they could, that could populate their mental world, that could give them to create symbols, to create ideas, to create concepts that could give them a way of understanding the world around them.

So they looked at nature and they saw, at least at this particular time, in man's development in history, that animals, certain plants, actually had powers that were greater than them.

For example, the lion was stronger, the gazelle was swifter, the hippopotamus or the elephant was bigger.

The hawk could fly, the tree could produce fruit.

So they could they could look at all of these natural phenomena and see that they, they had powers that were in some sense greater than that which man in his puny state had.

So they use these powers inherent in these animals or other natural phenomena to create symbols for their own mental or psychological... Listervelt> But not to worship?

Dr.

Finch> Oh no.

Never.

They still don't worship.

They never did worship animals.

They don't worship rocks.

They don't worship trees.

They worship, what they do is they venerate the power inherent in the tree or the rock or the animal, because that power, as everything else does, comes from God, and that is what they've... Listervelt> What is amenta?

A-M-E-N-T-A and how prominently will it figure in our discussion?

Dr.

Finch> Amenta means literally hidden land.

"Amen" or "Amen" means hidden "Ta" means land.

Amenta is the netherworld.

It is the underworld.

It is the world that the soul enters at death.

It is, it is the world that the soul must traverse through in order to reach a point where, as Egyptians say, he does not die a second time, but is reborn, and that Amenta is, is, if you will, another earth or an underworld populated by many dangers and perils, by many things that are, seek to attack the soul, which, by the way, is, sort of you will a spiritual... The sun, by the way, becomes sort of the physical manifestation of the, of the soul.

And so the dangers of Amenta that attack the sun as it sets in the West and moves on, on the underground river, through the underworld to be reborn in the East is also an allegory for what happens to the soul at death on its way to being, becoming reborn.

Listervelt> What is the so-called Egyptian Book of the Dead?

How old is it and how old is it compared to the Bible?

Dr.

Finch> The Egyptian Book of the Dead simply is a prescription for successfully navigating Amenta for the soul.

That, and- Listervelt> Put it differently.

(laughing) Dr.

Finch> It is the... rituals, by which the soul can successfully meet and overcome and conquer all the dangers that are inherent in the voyage through the underworld, so that it can be so they can be born again.

Listervelt> These sacred writings must be read.

Dr.

Finch> Must be read, yes.

But in a sense they also represent, but you see there, there's several things I've got to say.

One thing, The Book of the Dead is a, is a book of judgment and salvation.

Interestingly enough, if we look at the Old Testament, and New Testament, The Old Testament is a book of judgment.

The New Testament is a book of salvation.

In the New Testament, Jesus says, particularly in John, he says, I have not come to judge.

I've come to save.

He says that verbatim.

With the old, But the Book of the Dead, is that.

It is judgment, and it is salvation, and it is, it is, it is a book of rituals on preparing the soul for its new life, to be judged for the acts on earth and to be saved, so that it can so that it can, so that it can live or be reborn again.

Now these rituals go back again to the infancy of the human race in Africa, long before there is any Egypt.

So you cannot say that any one person or group of persons wrote the Book of the Dead.

What was finally done in historical period in ancient Egypt is that these accumulated rituals over a period of thousands of years, which are a reflection of the spiritual experiences of mankind in Africa, were finally recorded in written form.

Listervelt> About what time?

<Oh, boy!> Say for your, your latest or earliest.

Dr.

Finch> Very latest would have been 4500 BC.

Although it's very likely, that it was a lot earlier than that.

Listervelt> Okay, okay.

And this compares to the Bible?

>> Well, it is in effect, the rituals and the symbols, that you find in the Bible, Old and New Testament.

So much of it can be related to things that are described and expressed and experienced in what we call the Book of the Dead .

So then in a sense, yes, it is a prototype of the Old and New Testaments.

Listervelt> But the Bible was written well.

Dr.

Finch> The Bible was written, let's see the Bible, the first book of the Bible was written by the prophetess Deborah about 1000 BC.

This is 3500 years after the latest date for the B ook of the Dead.

That's just one, the first book of the Bible.

The book, the Bible wasn't completed until about 100 A.D.

it took a thousand years to write the Bible.

So, you know, we're talking about a 3500 year gap between the, end of the writing of the B ook of the Dead and the beginning of the writing of the Bible.

Listervelt> What is the concept of the word in the Egyptian religion?

<Okay.> And how does it compare with the concept of the word in the Judeo Christian writings?

Dr.

Finch> In...the Egyptian conception, I, really I should say, the African conception, The word is that was called everything into being.

The word is what Tao used to activate the principles or archetypes of his mind in the process of creation, called forth by the actual issuing of the word, symbolically or metaphysically, from the mouth of the God, Tao Listervelt> Tao the Egyptian name for God.

Dr.

Finch> One.

Yes.

<Okay, okay.> Yes.

Whose name, by the way, means opener.

So, the word is that part of God which brings everything into creation.

So the word itself was personified as something divine.

And this is directly a direct steal, when John in the Gospel of John says in the beginning of the... was...in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

This comes right out of the African Egyptian conception of the word which having, which is God, bringing everything into being through the activity of the word, <Okay> which, by the way, in Africa and Egypt, which is why speech and speaking was considered something you didn't take lightly, and that you did not do promiscuously.

<Because.> Dr.

Finch> For example, this business about oaths, that's the whole problem with oaths, oaths.

You know, if you made an oath or made a promise in essence what you were doing by saying that you were bringing, you were bringing God to witness what you were saying, and to break an oath or to break a promise or to lie was to sin against the very essence of life, to sin against God himself or God itself, because God is the word.

And if you bring a word, all those things that you do and say, that's why you do not say things lightly.

That's why you do that.

That's why you do not break.

You do not break your oath.

That's why your word is your bond.

They did not need written contracts because your word, your word was a bond A man was in those days would sooner take his life than break his word because the word was something sacred.

And to break a word was essentially a sin and a sacrilege against God.

Listervelt> Okay, Gerald Massey has a a chapter in his book entitled The Sayings of Jesus , where he compares statements attributed to Jesus with statements attributed to the earlier Egyptian Horus.

Let's take a look at one of the statements and get your, response to them, or comments to them.

Key one, before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the father, he loved them unto the end.

The Egyptian Ritual from The Book of the Dead I have come to an end for the Lord of heaven.

I rest at the table of my father, Osiris.

Dr.

Finch> Okay, I think that the comparison speak for themselves.

Osiris, remember one of the things that Jesus said, Jesus said, I am the bread of life and I, and in order to, in order to attain salvation, you have to partake of my body and my blood.

And that, this is the sort of prerequisite for salvation.

So to, if you, feast upon me and take in my essence, and thou shalt be saved.

This is why they went through the Last Supper.

This is my...break this bread.

This is my body.

Drink of this wine, this is my blood.

Well, because remember what we said about Osiris.

Osiris was also the feast.

Osiris was also the food that saved.

And literally Osiris was considered part was the growing grain.

<Okay> There we see on that slide, we see that Osiris is identified with the wine or the vine and the grape, and that is the butt of Osiris.

We go forward, we see the grain growing up out of his body.

So Osiris, that, also so Osiris in his death, provides the food that allows the grain to grow, that will save those who will eat of the bread.

That's why you eat of the bread.

That's why Osiris too was the bread of life.

That is the meaning of that particular quote.

I will eat and drink from the table of my father, Osiris.

Listervelt> Can we see that quote again, please?

Dr.

Finch> This was the, the you know, this is the essence of the Last Supper.

In fact, so much of us in the Bible, both an Old and New Testament, is post-resurrectional.

I guess what I mean by that, it is material that has taken out of Egyptian eschatology, described as happenings that occurred in Amenta, of the soul, the passage of the soul, and the activities of the soul in Amenta, in the process of resurrection, allegorically and metaphorically speaking.

I rest at the table of my father, Osiris, because this is symbolically the food that you eat that will restore you, which will save you, which will resurrect you.

And what has happened in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, is that what is supposed to be spiritually happening in Amenta has been made into literal history, made into something that actually happened to reveal human beings on earth.

And, and in effect, this is essentially the Last Supper, the supper that the soul comes to eat at the table so that they, it may be restored to life because they took concrete ideas.

The ancient Egyptians, of Africa did and created out of them metaphysical concepts that were related.

Listervelt> Okay.

Key number two, please.

I will that where I am.

They also may be with me.

The Egyptian Ritual, be they with thee so that they may be with me.

Keep that up for a second, please.

Go ahead.

Dr.

Finch> Okay.

I think this relates to, another idea that, you find in the New Testament, and that is none.

"Come, come by the father, but through me."

And also part of that is, "where two are gathered together in my name, there shall I be."

And this is, part in parcel again of the ritual of the Book of the Dead.

Is that the only way that you attain salvation, and that you are able to go to the boat of Ra is through Osiris, that you become as Osiris himself.

That is, that Osiris is the way and the life.

That is why you come and be judged by Osiris.

And then once you are judged, you are judged and justified, you take on the name of Osiris, which means that you take on the essence of Osiris.

It means you become and are Osiris.

And it is that and it is only through Osiris and becoming one with Osiris and joining Osiris, that you can attain salvation in the heaven or the in heaven in the boat of Ra.

Listervelt> Now, once again, and people are going to get hung up, some people.

When you say Osiris, that was just their their name for what we call today God.

>> Yes.

But a particular aspect of God, and that is the aspect, that part of God, which, Well, no, let me let me answer this in a different way.

The one thing the one of the problems, the main problems in Christianity is that it has been solely and exclusively a religion based on a human happening in history.

What it has completely or almost completely forgotten or neglected was that the "Christhood" is also a condition within.

That is the one lesson that Christianity did not learn from the Book of the Dead .

"Christhood" meaning.

The "Christhood" meaning, that part of you which is divine.

What, what the Gospels and what the history of Jesus in the gospel shows, is the way in which any and every human being can reach, become divine, become God Himself, because there is this is the idea that there is a seed of divinity that exists in all human beings, and that it can be brought to complete fruition, so that each and every person has the possibility and the potentiality to become divine.

This, is by the way, is the imagery behind the opening of the flower, the opening of the lotus and the child Horus coming out of the lotus, because it is a seed that has flowered and bloomed, and that is also the idea behind a little child shall lead them so that, the "Christhood" is inherent in every individual, and that "Christhood" is that possibility to become as God, to become, in fact God, to return in effect to God.

And you see, this was the lesson of the drama of Osiris in Amenta, that each and every person has it within himself or herself to become as Osiris, that is, as you say, to become as God, so that the "Christhood", Osiris is the first, is the prototype of the "Christhood", and that the Jesus, the Christ is the next manifestation in history of the "Christhood", that had preexisted the advent of historical Christianity.

But what it, less it forgot is that it was not merely an external happening in history.

It is a process that is supposed to occur within every person.

Listervelt> But when you say Osiris, Isis and Horus, you aren't talking about real people.

Dr.

Finch> Okay, yes and no.

Listervelt> Okay.

(laughs) Dr.

Finch> I mean, in the sense that they are neters and therefore personifications of the one or the all and they're all creators and manifestations or God manifested in certain different ways, you're right, but the ancient Egyptians said that there was a person in their own history who in fact was, who had achieved in life Osirification, who had achieved, who had become Osiris.

And they venerated him as Osiris on Earth.

So it is the point that I'm making is that, yes, these things happen on a metaphysical level.

They happen on a spiritual level.

They happen on the, in the, in, in the, in Amenta, but what is, what is the, the one thing, it is possible for those things also to happen on earth.

It is a very, very rare occurrence.

It only occurs once in many, many millenniums.

But that is, that is the key to the cycles that we have talked about before.

Listervelt> Okay.

Well, we'll get to that later.

Dr.

Finch> But the point being is that it is possible for there to be a human being that in some sense manifests the Godhead.

Listervelt> Okay.

Dr.

Finch> So that's why I say yes and no.

Listervelt> Okay.

All right.

Let's go to key number three.

I am the bread of life.

<Yes> I am the light of the world.

I am the door of the sheep.

I am the good Shepherd.

I am the resurrection and the life.

I am the true vine.

Dr.

Finch> We've already covered a lot of that already.

And I'll just go through those briefly.

The bread of life.

We've already said How Osiris was the bread of life.

We showed the, the grain stalk growing out of his body.

We've talked about, the resurrection in the life, or resurrection and the life, Osiris, in fact, is just that he who has died and been reborn.

And I am the true vine, you know.

So we've dealt with that now I am the light of the world.

You find this in John, but you also find this again in the Book of the Dead .

And I almost wish I had my Book of the Dead in front of me.

I could read you passages which shows, which, in which Horus is described as the light in darkness, the light that will lead the soul out of darkness and into resurrection.

And so he is Horus, who, as I say, is just nothing more than a personification of Osiris is in fact the light of the world.

Now the shepherd and the sheep.

Okay.

This is going to require a little bit of explanation.

The ancient Egyptians made a complete copy, if you will, or a complete representation of their world in the heavens.

They sort of reconstituted in the heavens.

Now, very early on, they were stargazers, and they were able to observe and make records of the movements and activities of various heavenly bodies.

So astronomy begins with them.

One of the things they learned very early is that the earth tilts at a 23 and a hald degree axis from true vertical north.

When it does that, the Earth, the axis, the Earth, when it revolves or rotates, wobbles like a top.

When it wobbles like a top, that 23 and a half degree axis, which is our magnetic north, it slowly revolves around true north or the North Pole, the ecliptic, taking 26,000 years to do so.

This is the great year.

What they did after they determined the great year which took maybe, it may have taken them 26 thousand years of astronomical observation to do so.

They, in effect created a great circular clock, if you will, an imaginary clock, mythological clock that was defined by that 26 thousand year great year.

And they divided up into 12 arcs or 12 months.

They put the zoo types that we talked about into the heavens on this clock to define each arc or each segment, which was an age.

This is a so-called zodiac of today.

The zodiac is a Greek word basically meaning animals.

And the reason why, or zoo.

And the reason why is because these were zoo types or animal types that were put there, and we know them conventionally.

Taurus, Aries, the fishes.

Listervelt> But, but the original meaning and purpose of it was what?

Dr.

Finch> Okay, well... Listervelt> Go ahead, go ahead.

Dr.

Finch> And I'm going to remember to.

<Go ahead> Dr.

Finch> Now.. Really the purposes of it was in the heavens, really to write out in the heavens the progress of the perfected soul in the heavens, in the different, as related as related to the sun.

Because remember, the sun and the soul are two symbols for one another.

Now, what they do, what happened next is that if you look at the equinoxes, with the equinoxes, the equinoxes rise in one sign or constellation, there's defined.

<Equinox?> The equinox, <Explain that.> The equinox is, is, is a time when the, day and night are equal length.

<Okay> Okay.

When the sun moves on its ecliptic from the, its low point in the horizon in the winter solstice to the high point, the horizon in the summer solstice, it reaches a midpoint which is equal day and equal night.

The equinoxes would you, would rise in one of those arcs that I talked about.

Remember, they were they were defined by the zodiac and we can just go through them.

Aquarius, Pisces.

Aries.

Taurus.

Gemini.

Cancer.

Leo.

Virgo.

Libra.

A Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn.

<Okay> Now what happens however, due to that slow retrograde movement around the North Pole, the ecliptic, the equinoxes advance through each sign or arc in 22 thousand 145 years.

That 2,155 years is an age, and the each age is dominated by a particular sign, and that sign becomes a symbol of the age, becomes the spirit of the age.

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