On Lizards

A mass of lizards teeming, swirling endlessly in the darkness

Introduction

A year and a half ago in December 2020 I experienced a series of four visions, two of which have since come true. Today I’ll be sharing a detailed analysis of my earliest vision, which I have written up already here. 

I have discovered these visions mysteriously share common elements to Ra’s journey through the underworld from Egyptian myth. This is a topic that I previously knew nothing about, and lends credence to an idea I’ve shared previously that our imagination sources its content from a collective unconscious that is universal to us all. 

The Book of the Hidden Chamber

This journey is covered in detail in a funerary text called the Book of the Hidden Chamber. This text was written for priests and initiates, and was also found in the tombs of royalty to guide their journey through the afterlife. I’ve included images of relevant sections from these tombs in this article. 

The book describes Ra’s journey through the underworld over 12 hours from dawn to dusk. Initiates engaged in the Egyptian tradition would also undertake this same symbolic journey while still alive, with an end result of spiritual growth. This vision kicks off from the fourth hour of this journey, where Ra has entered into a wasteland presided over by a deity called Sokar, and is engulfed in total darkness. In the fifth hour, he encounters the corpse of Osiris and engages in a process of judgment presided over by Sokar. The completion of the judgment process culminates in an important event in the sixth hour termed the Midnight Mystery. 

This article will first highlight the commonalities between my vision and Ra’s journey from the Hidden Chamber text. At the end of each section, I’ll also relate back to my own personal experience in taking this trip through the underworld.

4th Hour - Desert of Sokar

I see a lone lizard soldier has appeared before me .. He tells me he is identified with the cold inert nature of my soul .. He tells me he will take me to the castle. He tells me that judgment awaits..

The setting described here is the Desert of Sokar, which teems with the lizard creatures described in this dream. Sokar is an ancient Egyptian deity, predating perhaps even Ra himself. For Ra to be traversing through his territory implies that we are traversing a truly primal aspect of ourselves, connected to our lizard instincts. These lizard creatures represent latent aspects of our being that yearn to be expressed. 

For this expression to occur however, Ra must first undergo the judgment process that will take place in the castle, which contains the ‘hidden chamber’. The most common judgment motif from Egyptian myth is the Weighing of the Heart, where the heart is judged by the lord of the underworld in the Hall of Two Truths, and only if the heart is found to weigh less than a feather will Ra be allowed to pass through. This is an analogy for what takes place during the next hour, where all life in the heart of Ra must be extinguished before passing to the Midnight Mystery.

Personal experience

At this stage of the journey from the texts, Ra is completely exhausted, helpless and in need of rekindling. He has reached the darkest point from which regeneration commences, he has lost his sight and is powerless, relying on his voice alone to guide him. In a similar manner, I was facing a similar situation at the start of 2021. I was dissatisfied with my job, and had been passed over for promotion. I felt my efforts were being unrecognized, and I needed to find a way out but couldn’t see where this might come from. 

The texts also indicate Ra’s boat is being towed by supporting deities, implying help will arrive from hidden sources. This would be exactly what I would come to find from this process. The schemes I concocted to improve my situation would amount to nothing, and it was only by turning inwards that I would start to see a way out.

5th Hour - The Hidden Chamber

I see that this castle floats in the sky, above a vast brilliant blue lake.. This is where I must await judgment, that my body will be cleansed of impurity.. (The lizards) tell me they await ‘the Great Initiator’ ..

I have a sense of a multi-faceted lizard with a thousand eyes shining from each of its scales.. The great lizard appears before me but from the depths of a great fire. He tells me he is the Fire.. He says he will burn my heart of impurity but that time has not arrived. I must allow his influence to manifest first.

The castle from the vision matches the ‘hidden chamber’ from the text, which is described as floating above a lake of fire, but ‘is a baptismal blue lake for the blessed’. The text describes the chamber as egg-shaped, indicating a process of incubation.

The texts describe a hidden initiation process that is presided over by the very same winged ‘Sokar serpent’ from the vision (pictured above). Above the chamber reads an inscription: ‘Land of Sokar .. guarding the mysterious flesh’, for the chamber contains the dead body of Osiris which has been preserved in the form of a mummy. The sacred process that takes place within this chamber is a fusion between Ra and Osiris.

The implication then is that in order to pass judgment, a fusion must be made between that which is alive and that which is dead, a union of opposites. Any remaining light in Ra is a ‘false light’, it no longer serves him and must be extinguished before the next cycle of the sun can commence. Once this is done he must then assume the death pose of Osiris in order to gain access to the Midnight Mystery.

Personal Experience

By now I have appreciated my professional dilemma is going nowhere, and have started inspecting my dreams for answers. Looking back on the dreams I recorded, they could best be summarized as follows - that I was harboring a dying light inside, a ‘false’ light, while outside there was a source of help arriving if only I let it in. 

The ‘false light’ was a way of relating to my career that no longer served me. The attitude could roughly be summarized as working stressful long hours, which may have been appropriate in the past but no longer now that I had a family. The process would show that this ‘false light’ of putting myself under undue stress would no longer bear fruit and it was time to move on.  

Seeing the futility of this behavior was difficult however, and so this period was marked by anger and resentment. I found it hard to accept the urgings from my unconscious to see things a different way. My solution was often to double down and work even harder, in an attempt to force life to provide the recognition I was craving. This of course would not work, and it was only once this process started to wind down that the incubation process would be complete. 

6th Hour - A Mass of Lizards

I see a vision of the depths in my heart. There is a mass of lizards teeming, swirling endlessly in the darkness. They lie hidden, writhing only dimly seen in the shadows.. The beaming image of the reporter appears before my mind’s eye. There is a rush of happy go lucky open free spirited vibes and emotions. The vision ends.

This vision indicates the fruit of the fusion between Ra and Osiris. The conscious awareness (Ra) is extinguished, and unites with the ‘dead stuff’ of consciousness (the mummy of Osiris). In short, the death pose adopted by Ra (pictured above) allows him to escape this world, but rather than death, it turns out Ra encounters eternal life. For through Osiris is found the lineage of our ancestors, the collected inheritance of all who have come before us. 

The vision indicates the Midnight Mystery arising in the depths of the heart. Ra returns to his origin in the ‘First Time’, where ‘the sun rises for the first time over an infinite lifeless sea’, represented here as the mass of lizards. 

The ‘First Time’ is an instant wherein the sea of potential, the mass of lizards, are eternally being realized. It represents an ‘endless beginning’ from which new inspiration is constantly sourced from. By entering into communion with this Mystery outside time, Ra’s soul is able to return replenished. His sight is restored, rejuvenating him to extend creation, in much the same way as the reporter from the vision.

Personal Experience

I mentioned previously that it was not through efforts to push my career forward that would evoke the Midnight Mystery. Any effort along that line would only serve to provide further life to the ‘false light’ that needed to be extinguished. Instead my attention had been devoted elsewhere to what lay beyond my dilemma, and so help arrived through a roundabout route.

The Midnight Mystery was evoked for me personally one night upon reading passages from a book called ‘Alone with the Alone’ by Henry Corbin. The book describes our world as consisting of One essence. A world wherein nothing is ever created from nothing, but is instead the realization of an already existing and latent state from this One essence. 

The realization that there is no death but only the further unfolding of latent potential was the lightbulb moment that allowed me to embrace the death of this ‘false light’. The book was describing the process described in the vision and the Egyptian texts, and occurred at the exact moment where I was ripe to exit my incubated state. The Mystery was then able to manifest, wherein it felt like a new world opened up to me, and I was bathed in the baptismal waters described from the vision. 

This ‘new world’ was the result of this union, wherein there was no longer conflict between my old patterns and the inner knowing stemming from my unconscious. Instead there was just one Self that I had stepped into which represented my own unique point of view on the world. The Egyptians described this as the ‘Akh’, the discovery of which is the culmination of the Midnight Mystery.

Conclusion

I find it hard to communicate these experiences without sounding inflated. First I would like to point out once again that this experience is the same process everyone goes through. Indeed the process that I have described is the original template of the underworld journey that is described in the Hero’s Journey that proliferates pop culture today.  To be initiated into undertaking this journey is simply to allow this process that typically takes place below conscious awareness to become conscious. 

The realization did not solve my problems. Despite the inner meaning of what had taken place, I continued to struggle with figuring out the next step in my career for quite some time. The Egyptian texts state: ‘The day is born at midnight, but conceived at dawn’, meaning that the broadening of consciousness that had resulted from the Midnight Mystery was still a seed, and needed time and attention to take root and grow. The journey of growing this seed to maturity is described in my second vision, which I’ll be expanding on shortly in my next article.