Death and the Afterlife – Shamanism of the future
Western man, with autonomous consciousness and with Western biblical monotheism, has created a space for himself that excludes death.
In healing shamanism we make ourselves aware of how death was integrated into life in past cultures.
This is not nostalgia, not a longing to bring back the past.
It is an opening of knowledge, an understanding of what is stored in the memory of our soul.
The ancient Egyptian religion, with its records, its written language, its symbols and its
insight into how the soul travels to higher spiritual planes or to lower emotional worlds as soon
as its life on earth is over, is a period that is very familiar to us European people.
For the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end, but a passage to a continuation of life by other means.
Each individual stood in a system of reference that included the living and the dead.
Everyone familiar with the shamanic work in the „Licht aus der Jurte Shamanic Centre Vienna“
knows that the „handprint of God“ is at work in every human being.
Even if this is often unrecognisable due to negative emotions.
This handprint of God remains after death.
In Ancient Egypt, it was called „the social self“.
Shamanic power is imbued with death.
Like the Egyptians, we do not love death, but it does not present such an existential drama for us
because we know and experience in shamanic journey that
our self extends far beyond the bodily self.
The soul is developing during our life on earth and is connected to our earthly existence.
It is shaped in this world and those who know take care of the soul. Lower emotions such as fear and everything that can be summarised under egoism block the way.
The ancient Egyptian religion, similar to us, tried to find the reason for problems, symptoms
and diseases in life.
For them, the dead became ancestors but only if the soul had discarded all the negative emotions
it had accumulated in life.
This is one of the reasons why, before the shamanic training we are emphasizing obstructive emotions, injuries, traumas and their healing in the training „Spiritual Healing – Healing Shamanism“
In this process, we are strengthening the powers of the soul.
Death without horror and fear
Death was not alien to our ancestors in times long past.
Death is depicted as a spiritual symbol of transition:
as a gate, as a portal,
as 7 gateways (147th chapter of the Book of the Dead).
The gates were guarded by watchmen, the afterlife police,
who served the good.
It was a protective wall that the souls had to pass through.
Shamanic death rituals
We have to work on them anew in today’s world.
In ancient Egypt, they had been an essential part of the culture.
This is also evident in the great rituals of embalming.
With the removal of the organs, especially the heart, those negative energies were banished that could prevent the soul from entering the realms of the bulrushes (Greek: Elysium).
If obstructive emotions were taken along, then the soul did not withstand the court of the dead.
Today, in our shamanic training we teach the ways of the soul in the demonic worlds, the astral worlds
and the worlds of light.
The feather – symbol for the flight of the soul
Anubis, the god of embalming, played an important role
in this flight.
In the court of the dead, the soul of the deceased had to give an account of itself in a fixed death ritual.
The deceased enumerated up to 80 violations that he had NOT inflicted on others.
He had to confirm this not only with his mouth but above all with his heart.
For verification, the heart was placed on a scale and weighed by the goddess of truth and justice (Ma`at).
If the soul passed the judgement of the dead, its heart was returned to it and it entered
into the sacred, the reunion.
As the soul moved on, it revealed itself to the great Mother, the Goddess of Heaven.
In her many manifestations, she symbolises the womb.
She recommends the soul to numerous other goddesses and gods and thus the soul is incorporated
into the world of the gods.
It returns home to the maternal.
The Path of Life
Ancient Egyptian people recognised the cycles of life and the power of renewal.
To return home to the origin in the circle of life.
To return to the One from which we emerged at birth.
These are counter-images to our linear thinking of transience.
Regeneration in the divine worlds.
Regeneration in the sense of being born anew through death.
According to the symbolic view of the ancient Egyptians, the sun did not stand still,
it gained vitality through a new rotation.
The mysterious night journey of the sun into the
depths of the underworld and midnight is still a mystery today,
a secret that can only be experienced in the depths of the soul.
Souls were also led into the orbit and, in their circulation, came into contact with the primordial waters.
The waters from which the world has emerged from
the beginning.
They are the sources of regeneration into which we immerse ourselves every night.
Those who immerse themselves in this primordial water regenerate all that is decayed, old and spent.
It is sacred, creative, divine and carries the secrets of redemption.
Regina Hruska Stephanie König Contact