The relationship to anamorphic gods and historical shamanic practice

in historical Egyptian and influence on modern magical practice

I was from an early age encouraged to attempt projection of my spirit in

animal form, a very traditional witch practice with many records of witches
shapeshifting into various forms cats, hares etc. Part of this process was to
become the animal and observe closely the behaviors interacting in the spirit
form with animals, when doing this I became aware of, outside of my own
mind, a collective spirit relating to some of the animals I shifted into
energetically.

In Shamanic practice historically we see depictions in cave art of figures like

the La Socier, these suggestions of anamorphic creatures show the link
between people and animals in a spiritual syncretic relationship.
Anamorphic figures historically goes back to the beginning of identifiable
humanoid thinking both in man and in near cousins like Neanderthal who
recently have been given credence for much of the early cave art including
abstraction, also noted is their use of medicinal herbs and ritual burial motives
again suggested by objects of art or ritual

However the main focus of this article will be the ancient Egyptian pantheon
and contemporary deities and their possible origin in the form of Shamanic
practitioners and practices. In fact the image of the La Socier in some aspects
is a proto Set in the sense that the anamorphic form of Set seems to be
almost an amalgamation of more then one animal being at times Jackal like
or fox or even a wolf, some representations looking like giraffe or even
donkey and a scorpion like mace, at times combining elements of the
different animals. In my experience in working with spirit realms creatures
often seem to combine aspects.

The concept of Proto deities in relation to the desert pantheons is one that is
slightly controversial but fits in with my own personal observations over the
years. My magical background is that of a traditional witch but over the years
have experimented with various other systems including Egyptian magic
around 30 yrs ago with the occasional joining in with others in their rituals.
Although my first introduction was via my local pet shop owner, who practiced
Egyptian magic and had the occasional conversations with while my mother
shopped, I was in my early teens at the time.

Anyway returning to the subject, prior to the magnificence of Egyptian society

the area was a tribal society with a close relationship to the land and the
animals that inhabited it and like others of this period there developed a
symbiotic relationship to the human inhabitants and their animal counterparts,
they anthropomorphized the behavior of animals and saw parallels in the
events of themselves.
Generally it was also more fertile then today and supported a greater level of
diversity as time went on the fertility of the kingdoms became more
dominantly reliant on the Nile flood plain centralizing people to its vast
expanse through the kingdoms

However lets look at it slightly differently, unlike many I believe that the
realms of the gods are just that and these beings exist now and then and in
fact long before the naked ape existed.
They were an embodiment of the energies of the land that manifested us and
them, I have long believed that animal interact with the spirit realms easier
then us and maybe certainly in some species have a kind of spirituality,
perhaps even a group soul, which manifests as a god like form, these
thoughts were first generated by my practices mentioned earlier.
Certainly in my working over the years with animal and plant world have
encountered a group soul, I have rarely experienced this among groups of
people except during ritual. Although both Jung and Campbell would argue
that at certain levels there is a shared consciousness, to me this is true of the
animal world, for example Sheldrake refers to how sheep across Britain
developed the capacity to cross cattle grids across the country at the same
time.

In ancient societies Animal Gods were worshipped in their natural form,

historically we can see societies had myth and representation of great animal
spirits be it Corvids in First Americans myth or the Golden Calf of Hebrew
tradition. I would argue that the wide range of the Egyptian pantheon was the
humanisation of existing animal deities, which to my mind existed before their
introduction via shamanic practice to the Egyptians. These were group soul
manifestations not of the people but the animals themselves.
Likewise the veneration of animal gods lead to the practice of keeping vast
numbers in the temple complex for example Thoth is the ibis-headed god of
wisdom and in his temple at Saqqara had 60,000 ibises some alive and
many mummified this could be seen energetically as encouraging the god to
be present, similar example are seen across Egyptian archeological finds just
look around the British Museum were Falcons likely mummified in rituals to
evoked the sky-god Horus or dogs for the jackal headed Anubis.
In my experiments using Egyptian deities I often found the urge to enter the
true animal form this happen once in a large group ritual were I had a really
difficult time not taking this form, especially bearing in mind I had to speak my
role.
As belief developed and the familial ties between the immensely complicated
pantheon developed more and more the gods became humanistic in
appearance and the gradual adoption of the god kings became the norm.
The traditional move from a symbiotic to parasitic relationship to animals
occurred with the switch of power from the gods and the increase in the
political aspects of religion seen in almost all human societies. When this
manifests the Leaders become either the gods themselves or their
representative from Pharaoh to Pope. Therefore in the depiction of the Gods
of Egypt we see over the different dynasties a move away from the
animalistic to the human form increasingly with the greater “civilization” of the
region.

Let us return to the shamanic aspects of Egyptian practice it being argued by

some that the story of Osiris was a human who died and was resurrected as
a god, much like Mithras or Jesus however the way in which he died and his
dismemberment is very similar to many shamanic stories of destruction and
rebirth with magical or divine powers the rewards of resurrection, particularly
with abilities to interact with the spirit world, Naydler argues this point also.
However I would go further and say, it could be argued that the various
resurrection myths of the world can be seen at there starting point, the story
of the animals in hunter societies where the hunted would be a willing
sacrifice in response to the supplications of the Shaman or other religions
specialist and the acknowledge spirit of the killed animal would be guided
back to its own spiritual place along with its ancestors who interacted with the
ancestors of the people.

We see the concept of the destruction and resurrection of gods in other

pantheons for example It is widely believed that the Nordic myth of Woden for
example gives reference to the shamanic experience, I have argued
elsewhere that many of the god figures in our history are memories of
especially gifted people who became legendary in nature and sometimes
availed to supernatural status, but that would be the subject of another essay.
Another example perhaps closer to our topic of discussion is the Hebraic
elder Moses, some years ago Benny Shanon's proposed rather convincingly
in my opinion that much of the events purported to Moses could be explained
by the use of entheogen’s particularly acacia wood is mentioned a number of
times in the Old Testament and wild rue which is still used. Shanon’s
experimented with these comparing them to ayahuasca in the visions and
hearing of voices. Significantly the Bible also mentions people seeing sound
another common experience for those using hallucinogens, other common
experience are that of animal gods, although personally never in favour of the
use of entheogen’s the breakdown of the normal social constructs of the mind
may enable some to experience, what in my opinion is the true free mind that
interacts with the gods both human and animal (including other groups not
covered)

Therefore to summarise it is my thought and belief that in the early depictions

of Anamorphic gods we are seeing a move from awareness of the primordial
animal gods predating humans and our attempts to anthropomorphise them
due to ego, believing in us being made in their image ie God and therefore
gods must equate to human. This ultimately leads to the degradation of the
importance of the animals and their representation as god figures. Now we
have little consideration of animal spiritual importance, to the point of modern
factory farming of cattle and the mistreatment of felines or dogs for example.

Note: Gods here is used in a non gender specific way

Article by
Trefor Wickens
16/3/2018