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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Achoo!Jun 16, 2006
Truth is all-potent with its silent power
If only whispered, never heard aloud,
But working secretly, almost unseen,
Save in some excommunicated Book;
'Tis as the lightning with its errand done
Before you hear the thunder.
-Gerald Massey
this can be read for free online here - theosophical.ca/AncientEgyptIntroduction.htm
7 of 9 found the following review helpful:
I wish I read this book many years agoAug 07, 2005
Ancient Egypt the light of the world (Part 1 & 2) is one of the best books that I have in my spirituality library. This book pulls back the curtain that blinds so many and reveals so much. To understand this book, is to help bridge the gap between many of the world's religions and Gnosis.
This is not an easy book to read, as it has 944 pages and every page seems to hold so much information and weight. The information contained in this book is a lifetime's work; to read this book is to understand this. This book is guaranteed to challenge what you hold to be true, especially to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Having said this though, I cannot say how accurate the information contained in the 2 volumes are; this will require further study. I will say that to date, even though I am a student of Gnosis, I do not accept the position of Gerald Massey and some Gnostics that Jesus Christ is Jehoshua Ben-Pandira; I.e. a person born at least 100 years prior to Jesus Christ.
Table of contents Vol 1
1. Sign-Language & mythology as primitive modes of representation.
2. Totemism, tattoo & fetishism as forms of sign-language.
3. Elemental & ancestral spirits, or the Gods & the glorified
4. Egyptian book of the dead & the mysteries of Amenta
5. The sign-language of astronomical mythology
a. The primitive African paradise
b. Egyptian wisdom
c. The drowning of the dragon
6. The sign language of astronomical mythology. Part II
a. Horus & the double horizon
b. The making of Amenta
c. The Irish Amenta
d. The mount of glory
7. Egyptian Wisdom and the Hebrew genesis
8. The Egyptian wisdom in other Jewish writings
Table of contents Vol 2
9. The ark, the deluge, & the world's great year
10. The exodus from Egypt & the desert from Amenta.
11. Egyptian wisdom in the revelation of John the Divine.
12. The Jesus-legend traced in Egypt for ten thousand years.
a. Child-Horus
b. The Jesus-legend in Rome
c. The Egypto-Gnostic Jesus
d. Double Horus, or Jesus and the Christ
e. The Mysteries & the Miracles
f. Jesus in the Mount
g. Sut & Horus as Historic Characters in the Canonical Gospels
h. The group in Bethany
i. The Founders of the Kingdom
j. The Last Supper: the Crucifixion & the Resurrection
k. The Resurrection from Amenta
l. The Sayings of Jesus
33 of 36 found the following review helpful:
 Better and better with every return to the pageJun 05, 2000
I am currently rereading this near masterpiece of esoteric, and anthropoligical look at Egyptology and ancient Egyptian civilization- and its legacy. It gets better and better everytime. Gerald Massey is much like Freud, a man whose herculean intellect combined with his revolutionary discoveries (and in Freud's case obvious character flaws) make people long after him debate his relevance in the intellectual world he himself created (kind of like debating the existence of Frank Lloyd Wright's art in the Guggenheim Museum). What stops this book from being a five star epic is simply his tendency to ramble, creating a labyrinthian world of insight and ideas that can confuse the reader. Yet his work is so meaningful, and so provocative, that it is has only been in the last few years, with the advent of Mega-book outlets like Amazon.com, that his books were available outside of the occult or Afrocentric bookstore. Gerald Massey was not an "Afrocentric" as we have come to know the term today- which is now seen as pejorative. That is what makes him all the more important. In fact, one major reason that his work has been written off for most of this century, is that his logical deductions, gathered from the variety of disciplines that work so logically together, fly in the face of conventional scholarly wisdom without an obvious thing for him to gain from it in the form of reputation or finances. His work reifies the linguistic, astronomical/religious, architectural and Darwinian/evolutionary perspectives to such a degree that devout Christians and Greco/Roman cultural sepremacists should beware this book. It will shake the very foundations of your faith before giving you the space to reclaim it with a new point of view; particularly in his decoding of the origins of our comparitively modern religious beliefs and literary myths. Like it or not, Gerald Massey was one of those authors that turn your mind upside down, like Alice's looking glass, to the point where you wonder what is the "real" ancient world, and its influence on the world after it- up to and including today. That alone makes him profoundly successful as an historian/Egyptological anthropologist, with something great to offer all of us. You will be surprised at how meaningful his perspectives will become to you, over and over again.
33 of 35 found the following review helpful:
A monumental work that helps explain religion and mythologyOct 06, 1999
Gerald Massey (1829-1907)had humble origins: his father was aboatman on the canals of England.Gerald had to work long hours in afactory for a pittance before he was ten years old.But he had a strong urge to learn and through self education he became a well known poet.( To me much of his poetry is stilted, but now and then certain phrases reveal inspiring poetic imagination.)He became interested in ancient Egypt and learnt hieroglyphics.His magnum opus is this work, a pioneering study of the mythology of ancient Egypt, truly the light of the world.Massey shows how this mythology is related to natural and celestial phenomena.He is very convincing when he explains how the Christian mythos is based on that of ancient Egypt.The original Christ was Horus, and he gives 180 parallels between the lives of Horus and Christ.An open minded reading of this book will leave little doubt that the Christian Christ was based on Horus.He throws much light on THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD ( better called THE BOOK OF COMING FORTH BY DAY).He calls it THE RITUAL. As enlightening as he is,I find that Massey omits to consider the inner aspects of religion.He fails to see that the Egyptian mythos is primarily concerned with the spiritual development of man, and it uses outward Nature to symbolise inner spiritual evolution.This is explained by Alvin Kuhn in THE LOST LIGHT, who is indebted to Massey, but takes his ideas further into the spiritual and soul aspects.All in all, ANCIENT EGYPT, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is a unique and fascinating book.Most books written about ancient Egypt are way off beam, but this book puts you on the right track.It is a must read in order to start to understand the ancient Egyptian mythos.
16 of 20 found the following review helpful:
A courageous work of scholarship that is still unsettlingSep 28, 1999
Gerald Massey is much like Freud, a man whose herculean intellect combined with his revolutionary discoveries (and in Freud's case obvious character flaws) make people long after him debate his relevance in the intellectual world he himself created (kind of like debating the existence of Frank Lloyd Wright's art in the Guggenheim Museum). What stops this book from being a five star epic is simply his tendency to ramble, creating a labyrinthian world of insight and ideas that can confuse the reader. Yet his work is so meaningful, and so provocative, that it is has only been in the last few years, with the advent of Mega-book outlets like Amazon.com, that his books were available outside of the occult or Afrocentric bookstore. Gerald Massey was not an "Afrocentric" as we have come to know the term today- which is now seen as pejorative. That is what makes him all the more important. In fact, one major reason that his work has been written off for most of this century, is that his logical deductions, gathered from the variety of disciplines that work so logically together, fly in the face of conventional scholarly wisdom without an obvious thing for him to gain from it in the form of reputation or finances. His work reifies the linguistic, astronomical/religious, architectural and Darwinian/evolutionary perspectives to such a degree that devout Christians and Greco/Roman cultural sepremacists should beware this book. It will shake the very foundations of your faith before giving you the space to reclaim it with a new point of view; particularly in his decoding of the origins of our comparitively modern religious beliefs and literary myths. Like it or not, Gerald Massey was one of those authors that turn your mind upside down, like Alice's looking glass, to the point where you wonder what is the "real" ancient world, and its influence on the world after it- up to and including today. That alone makes him profoundly successful as an historian/Egyptological anthropologist, with something great to offer all of us. He may be considered, along with the superhuman Godfrey Higgins (ANACALYPSIS), as the gatekeeper of alternative scholarly vision. It is a deeply transformative work. You will be glad you own this book; especially if you have children.
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based on 5 reviews
