Atum-Rā & the Egyptian Cosmogony
How Egyptian Creation Myth is still ongoing in your Brain!
Egyptian mythology is very much alive today, in more ways than you can perhaps imagine. Recently, I have posited the Snake Response Theory (SRT) explaining the common fairy tale and mythological motif of the struggle with the self and the “inner snake”. Quick recap: Our brain has evolved from reptiles. These reptilian nucleii are still active today and play a crucial role in our daily human struggle with the forces of consciousness and unconsciousness.
I felt called to revisit the Egyptian Cosmogony and found this fight perfectly depicted in its creation myth: Rā — The Path of the Sun God. I’ve included the awesome YouTube animation, text below, and my own pen drawings.
Let’s see what we can learn from Rā so we can better understand the world and our human Operating System.
Egyptian Creation Myth
“Before all time there was the Nun. Sea of Chaos. Where all forms what was to be, lay hidden. Within the heart of the living Nun stirred the spirit of the waters, the great snake Apep. From the coils of Apep sprang Atum, the first God of Creation and the one became two.
Apep embraced Atum in his coils, binding tightly to his second nature trying to become one with himself again. But Atum transformed himself in the folds of Apep into the Scarab God of Becoming and broke free of his embrace.
Apep the Serpent of Chaos fought to return with Atum to the heart of the Nun. But Atum overpowered Apep.
Lying now alone in the waters, Atum thought of his children to be. In his heart he created their names and spoke them: Shu the Air, Tefnut the Moisture. And they were given form. Shu and Tefnut embraced their father Atum, then left him to explore the limits of the Nun.
Alone once more in the dark waters of the Nun, in his mind’s eye, Atum watched the children lose strength as they ventured too far. Atum took the divine power of his Eye and sent it, to light their way home. Atum could not be without the light of his eye. A new eye grew in its place. And in this new eye Atum saw the return of his children. When the first Eye returned she was in fury of the one who had taken her place, and tried to destroy it. But Atum placed her on his brow as his royal protector.
In his heart Atum created the first dry land, the mound (Benben). And with his children, Shu and Tefnut, brought it into being. From the mound, Atum spoke the name of his Soul Bird, Bennu, the Phoenix. Bennu landed on the first dry land and laid his egg. Which was the lotus bud of the dawn of creation. From the heart of the Lotus were born the many forms of the Sun God, the divine light. Atum joined with the light of his creation and Rā came into being (Atum-Ra).
The light of Rā dispelled the darkness of the Nun.”
The Meaning and Psycho-Analysis
Now what does it all mean? The first thing to understand is that all creation myths on our planet try to explain how humanity came into consciousness — an explanation for how we evolved from the unconscious living animal, to man, whose brain has come alit. Though these myths may depict the creation of the outer world, they refer to the birth and light of the inner eye.
The Egyptian cosmogony (birth of the cosmos) revolves around Atum-Ra, the Sun God. He is both the Eye and the Light, which in psychological terms makes sense as it explains the shift from unconscious to conscious.
Rā = Awareness (the personification thereof)
Opposed to awareness is darkness, which is how the world began before we came to see. The Egyptians believed the world sprang from LIVING Nun, the dark ocean. This is not a dead sea, there was just nobody yet to see it. From this primordial sea arose Apep, the great Serpent and personification of Chaos.
Nun = Apep = Unawareness
Cultures all over the planet personify the dark (unconsciousness) with the Snake. Given the Snake Response Theory, we understand the human brain is the neocortex built upon the mammalian brain which is constructed upon the reptilian brain. Humans have evolved from a common reptile ancestor and inherited many biological responses and brain functions from the sloughing Snake.
This is the reason why the serpent is always included in cosmogonic myth. In our deeper brain lives the inner Apep, the lizard brain, that we still need to contend with today. We are funny creatures, walky-talky monkeys on lizard brain OS. And by no means are we separate from the animal kingdom. We are born from animal. We are born from snake. Egyptians already knew this. Something modern man has forgotten.
Ongoing Daily Struggle
The reality of Men is the struggle between these two neurological systems of control. On one hand we have the unconscious and biological functions represented by the snake Apep. And on the other hand we have Atum-Ra, consciousness, the Eye, the Light, representing the human neurological layer. Preferably we’d be fully conscious, but the snake is strong and keeps parts of us in Nun, so it can maintain control. It is our daily task to balance our snake parts with Atum-Rā and come to seek an integration and move more dark parts into the light.
The Egyptian story follows up with Seth (Snake) and Horus (Eye), who continue the struggle between the darkness and the light. Not much different than the modern mythology of Star Wars and the good and dark sides of the Force.
So concluding, the Egyptian creation myth is not only what Egyptians believed how the world came to be, but that it is describing the nature of our human brains.
And in it, the ongoing epic still rages on.
Thanks for Reading
Please subscribe if you like this content. In future articles we’ll explore what we can learn from Ma’at (truth and balance) to support the Light in this fight. And also there’s interesting lessons to learn from Ra’s journey into Duat, the underworld, where Rā and Apep continue to fight it out.
