—
There is no barrier, just belief
You cannot buy a ticket
The man who smiles back at you
From the window wears a mirror
——-
But her smile is better than yours
——-
To travel on this train
You have to believe you can
You have to believe in trains
You have to believe…
——-
That the train is greater than your shoes
——-
But not in fantasy
And not in make-believe
And not in anything
Which others tell you
——-
For the short slope is for your bare feet alone
——-
It’s midwinter and the train is coming
The train is always coming
The train is arriving now
The train…is
——-
Waiting on platform One
——-
©Copyright Stephen Tanham, 2015
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River of the Sun, Chapter Ten – Darkness at the Door
Rameses waited for a moment on the quayside, listening to the sound of the waters lapping at the stone in the black night. He was about to do something that his father would have found unthinkable–he was going to force entry into a temple of the mysteries and take over the rite, deposing the high priestess and claiming precedence by virtue of his royal stature.
Menascare had now caught him up, but remained silent, choosing to stand behind him. The regent didn’t need to ask if the older man approved – he could feel the distaste and the anger in the air between them.
Standing to his left, Obion had no such qualms, and had unsheathed his sword. Its thin blade glittered in the moonlight and caught the flickering flames of the torches that had welcome all to the island temple.
But, they will not welcome us, thought Rameses, looking behind him and studying the efforts of the mighty oarsmen of the crew as they dragged their heavy cargo from the deck of the Beak of Horus onto the quay, using a complex system of ropes attached to the stones against which visiting ships were moored. The young Pharaoh-in-Rising watched until the oarsmen had finished their task, resting their load on the jetty and re-arranging their ropes to form a huge carry-harness. Breathing heavily, they stood, enduring, ready and silent, awaiting his command.
Rameses turned to Menascare, ready to taunt his former mentor.
“No stomach for this, old friend?”
“None, majesty,” said Menascare. “You know my views on the sanctity of temples…” he gazed up at the sky, as though in prayer. “But I will play my part in what you wish to do.”
Rameses nodded, smiling as Obion snorted with disgust at his antagonist. It was a favourite game, playing one off against the other. There was something delicious about putting his former teacher in such a position. There was fondness there too – going back to his childhood, but, since the news that Seti was dying, some of the old mental diversions had become more serious.
The tension between Lord Menascare and Obion was approaching a crisis–and Rameses was by no means certain he would continue to support the older man. Obion’s decisiveness mirrored how he felt he had to be to take the reins of Egypt–and set an early example to those who opposed his ways. Menascare’s hesitant stance on so many things may well have served them both as a tool of reflection in the past; but, a new age was beginning, and Rameses knew exactly what he needed to do: ruthless action was the way forward. Although his father would soon be gone, he would make the Seti in his head proud of what would follow. From the land of Amenti, his father would observe and approve as the unchosen one proved his worth.
Rameses turned to face the twin pylons that led to the inner temple where the rite was in progress. With gesture alone he signalled that the party should move through, and arranged himself at the apex of a fighting triangle with Mensacare and Obion just behind his right and left shoulders. Others of the Talatat followed on behind, diminished in numbers by the ones who were already secreted in the temple. The young leader smiled at the artistry of that… the tortured priest had served them well, while he lived.
At the rear of the fighting elite, the oarsmen followed, their burden swinging in a cradle of carrying ropes as they marched in time, with slow and careful steps which belied the mass they carried.
It seemed mere seconds before they reached the approach to the huge, bronze, temple doors. As they neared the temple, two guards came out of the shadows, bearing torches, faces aghast and eyes wide with disbelief. Rameses did not wait for them to recognise their visitors. Using the flat of his sword, he struck down the first to challenge. Obion dealt with the second. The two bodies lay unconscious, a disorderly ruin amidst a more purposeful arrow of precision.
The fallen were pulled to one side. Rameses walked forward to press his hands on both the doors, enjoying the cool of the metal on his palms. “Mine, now,” he whispered in a voice so low that only Obion and Menascare heard his chant. “Mine now…”
The Talatat stood to one side as the bearers brought up the battering ram; made from a solid trunk of cedar and carved with symbols that would terrify any enemies of the royal house unfortunate enough to be subject to its might.
They all waited while Rameses put his ear to the bronze, listening intently to the muted sounds from within, and picking his moment.
——————————–
Index to previous chapters:
Chapter One – Gifts From the River
Chapter Two – An Agony of Sunset
Chapter Three – The Dark Waters
Chapter Four – Touching the Sky
Chapter Five – The Fire Within
Chapter Seven – The Crystal Air
Chapter Eight – The Unchosen Darkness
Chapter Nine – The Priestess Calls
—————————
Introduction to River of the Sun
In April 2015 a group of people gathered in the Derbyshire hills to enact the Silent Eye’s annual Mystery Play, entitled, The River of the Sun. The five-act mystical drama formed the backbone of that Spring weekend, and told the fictional story of a clash of ego and divinity set in an Isis-worshipping temple located on an island in the Nile, during the the fascinating period of the 19th dynasty, the time of Rameses the Great.
The 18th and 19th dynasties were a time of upheaval for ancient Egypt on many levels. The reign of the ‘Heretic King’ Akhenaten saw Egypt’s religious structure torn apart, as the revolutionary Pharaoh became what Wallis Budge called the ‘world’s first monotheist’; re-fashioning the power of the many Gods with one supreme entity – the visible sun disc, the Aten, for which Akhenaten, alone, was the high priest. Many have pointed to the failure of the ‘herectic’ Pharaoh’s politics, but few have doubted the sincerity of his religious vision. He will, forever, remain an enigma.
Whatever the nobility of his goal, the actions he took were ruthless, and included the shutting down of the annual deity festivals which were the sole point of ritualistic contact between the ordinary people of Egypt and their locally-worshipped gods. In addition, Akhenaten paid little attention to the domestic and military affairs of Egypt, allowing the country’s enemies to encroach on its borders, greatly weakening Egypt’s power at that critical time for the region.
After Akhenaten’s brief reign, culminating in the Pharaoh’s mysterious death, shadowy military forces took control of Egypt, instigating the 19th dynasty in the persons of Rameses I and, soon thereafter, Seti I, whose throne name derives from the god Set – often considered the ‘evil one’ because of his slaying of his brother, Osiris.
Seti I is judged by modern historians as having been one of the greatest-ever pharaohs, yet his importance in the 19th dynasty was eclipsed by the actions of his second son, the brilliant Rameses II, whose long reign of over sixty years included much self-promotion and the alteration of Egypt’s recent history. Both Seti and Rameses II (Rameses the Great) were passionate about the evisceration of the last traces of Akhenaten’s ‘chaos’, as they saw it.
But, although, by the 19th dynasty, the the ‘Son of the Sun’ was long dead and the buildings of his embryonic and doomed city of Tel-al-Armana were reduced to rubble, something of that time remained in the Egyptian consciousness. A new kind of connection between Pharaoh and God had been established, one which elevated mankind, if only in the being of the Pharaoh, to be someone who ‘talked with God’. It was, at the very least, a bold experiment and, though the world would have to wait until the 19th century to re-discover the ‘erased’ pharaoh, the philosophical waves of that period rippled out and dramatically affected the way the incoming 19th dynasty had to repair the worship of the Gods, uniting the people of Egypt under a trinity of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut.
Our fictional story is a tale of politics, friendships, mind and faith. It is set against an historically accurate background, and at a time when Rameses was due to take the throne from the dying Seti .
Returning to Thebes in his swift warship, crewed by his fearsome Talatat mind-warriors, Rameses decides to mount a surprise night-time raid on the island-based Isis temple which has prospered under the sponsoring reign of his father. Rameses suspects that the inner teachings conducted by the revered High Priestess and Priest conceal views that relate to the thoughts of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He plans to insert himself and his warriors of the mind into the islands’s Spring rites as the high priest and priestess begin a cycle of initiation for a chosen apprentice priest who has proved himself worthy of special advancement.
The resulting clash draws everyone, including the young Pharaoh-in-Rising, into a spiralling situation where each is forced to confront their own fears as well as living out the roles which life has allocated them. River of the Sun is the story of a spiritual and political encounter from which none emerge unchanged, including the man who will shortly be Pharaoh, the mighty Rameses II, whose secret name for himself is ‘the unchosen’.
Through the eyes and minds of those surrounding the chosen priest and the ‘unchosen’ Pharaoh, the River of the Sun takes us on a tense and compelling journey to the heart of power and its eternal struggle with truth.
The chapters of the book will be serialised in this blog. The finished work is planned to be available in paperback and Kindle early in 2016.
————————————————–
River of the Sun, serialised here, and its associated images, is the intellectual property of Stephen Tanham and is ©Copyright material.
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+ Greek Myths, Heracles, Hercules, Higher Mind, Journey of the hero, Labours of Hercules, Mystery Schools, myths and spirituality, Silent Eye School, Uncategorized
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 42 – The Huntress
by Steve Tanham
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 42 – The Huntress
.Alexandra.
“Animals…” I said, just letting it hang in the air.
“Animals?” John replied, playing his favourite ‘dead bat’.
Just at that moment, Rose brought my coffee. Getting to our coffee shop after him was becoming annoying–particularly as I made every effort not to. Wherever this myth led, it was clearly important to him that I ‘got it’. He had arranged everything to control the quest; and something inside me was rebelling…
“Whatever it is, it’s all about animals…” I said, sure that the word ‘animals’ was the key to unravelling my tangled, but not muddled, thoughts.
I had wrestled and wrestled with this one–the inner meaning of the doe in the sign of Cancer; the doe that three people claimed but… suddenly the review of my own hunt triggered a further thought…
“Hunting… the doe… there was only one hunter!” I blurted out.
“Heracles..” John sipped his coffee, smiling and nodding, “You!” Then he held up his cup so that it obscured part of the one eye he kept open, looking at me with half an eyeball.
“Half an eyeball…” I muttered, disgusted, and becoming sarcastic in my frustration. “Shouldn’t take it out on you, but its still half a sodding eyeball…”
John chuckled. “Took Heracles a while,” he said, calmly, “In fact, it took him a whole cycle of the zodiac…”
“And all the time Diana and Artemis tried to frustrate him, hiding the Doe in the eternal forests,” I added, remembering the details of the myth, again.
“And did the Sun god, Apollo, intervene?” he asked. It was a carefully phrased question. I wanted to say ‘yes’ but then thought better of it, because Apollo hadn’t really – not till the end.
“Not really…” I sipped my own coffee, watching the hunter that was John gaze at me over the top of his own cup. “It was only when he took the Doe, injured, into the Sun temple, that Apollo intervened, as though…” I had slipped into that state of revelation, again.
“As though…?” asked John, very quietly.
“As though… the Doe were a child of the temple that had to be brought back to where it began,” And then I added, “And Apollo healed it so that it was, apart from being captured, unchanged from how it had started – whole, again!”
“And the purpose of all that would be?”
I could feel the ‘flow’ of the moment–that surge of energy as something new broke into my consciousness.
“To free it from the forces of the Moon–symbolically, the organic forces of evolution, which had done their work.” I felt the surge continue, even as he asked me the next question, which I knew would follow.
“And what of Diana, the huntress of the Sun? Why would a daughter of Apollo have to be denied in her claim to the Doe?”
I was ready. “Because Apollo, being the male and Kingly figure, would be the originator, in a spiritual sense the Father, who generated the Doe to be the carrier of something vital for those…” I searched for the word. The male and female aspects of gender did not fit, easily, into modern thinking; but I could see their original intent. “…below.”
That was it… something had been ‘given’ to those below, those evolving from a divine birth–Apollo’s offspring, and Heracles had been the only one, apart from Diana’s permitted and brief glimpse, to be allowed into the temple of the Sun. But Diana was a principle and not a human. The folded paper creature and the boat from our last Monday’s coffee meeting had represented that climb of evolution… So, the divine gift had to be at the heart of what it was to be human; and yet this single thing, this Doe, existed at different levels in all of us, male and female, equally.
“The Doe is our aliveness, then?” I asked it, knowing that I was close, but not sure that it was exactly right.
“And what’s the real test of something alive?” John asked, embracing me with his eyes.
“We feel, we think, we react to the world, we create, we suffer, we have joy…” I was streaming out all that I could think of about what it was to be human.
“All of those, yes,” he said. “And so you have to find a single attribute that covers the lowest forms of life right up the highest; something possessed by the simplest single-celled life-form, but which evolves with it, expands with it, to become human and then, as though reaching its maturity in the first two phases of its existence, as the Doe did, teases with its new beauty and dances away, to create a chase, a quest…” My skin crazed with goose bumps as he said the closing word very softly, “Creating a hunt that takes us all beyond being human.”
Finishing his coffee, he reached into his black bag and took out three small envelopes. Then he left, kissing me briefly on the top of the head, as he departed.
For a while, I stared at the white rectangles on the table. I would open them on the train… I would descend into my mundane but essential world of London to fight for my living, as animals must do; but, I thought, holding up the three envelopes, I would make sure I looked up at the stars a lot this week…
But, then, I didn’t do that… In my impatience, I ripped open the envelopes and shook out three pieces of paper. They were blank on the sides that emerged. With that sinking feeling I turned them all over… blank on the other sides, too.
Cursing him, I left the cafe, but, as I walked, I began to smile. The part-rage had marked a transition from passive to active. He was no longer going to spoon-feed me the answers. I knew I would have to work for it from now on.
The huntress stretched her claws and looked up at the pale winter sun. She was hungry…
———————————————————–
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is usually published on Thursdays.
All images and text ©International copyright, The Silent Eye School of Consciousness, 2015.
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Terminal Outbreath
——-
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2015
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Dear WordPress,
Yes, it’s me again. Well, what did you expect? Reindeer?
First, let me thank you for providing what is, in my humble opinion, the best blogging platform out there with what has to be the best blogging community you could wish for.
Second… WordPress, we have a problem.
Well, several actually.
Again.
For starters, let me ask… have you been playing at happiness engineering again? I do wish you wouldn’t. In fact, most of us wish you wouldn’t to judge by the comments when you do. Even worse, we ever know what’s coming until the usual batch of oddities start occurring. Like bloggers who disappear from our notifications… notifications that cease arriving. Notifications tabs that ‘forget’ to let us know about comments. Readers who get in touch to check you are okay because they haven’t had any notifications either… regardless of the fact you haven’t missed posting…
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River of the Sun, Chapter Nine
The Priestess Calls
Anzety, high priest of the Isis temple, watched from the east of the temple as his sister, Neferaset, the prime figure of authority on the island, entered through the opened portal of the west. The symbols of her status as high priestess, worn at forehead and throat, reflected the candle lights and seemed to shimmer as she moved. With her were Amkhren, the novice priest to be initiated, and Snefer, his only surviving relative and the woman who had raised him, fighting frailty and pain to do so. Neferaset held her hands behind her, bringing both of them into the temple space with an unusual gesture of equal status.
The only noise in the temple was the movement of Neferaset’s golden slippers, as their leather made subtle sounds of sliding contact, carrying the priestess over the crystalline white floor in a movement that resembled a snake gliding over water. Although the temple’s central space was arranged as twin circles – one inside the other – within each of the rings there was traced an equilateral triangle of marked points; its head being in the east and its twin tails spaced equally to divide the edges of the circles into thirds.
Moving clockwise around the outer circle, Neferaset stopped the boy at the first of these markers, wordlessly instructing Amkhren to remain there with gestures from the fingers of her right hand, which flickered like a cobra’s forked tongue. Once she was sure he had understood, Neferaset continued to take Snefer towards the east and the waiting Anzety, knowing that the novice’s eyes would, from now until the end of the rite, be fixed on her, no matter what happened.
She was so engrossed in binding his attention, that she failed to notice that, dotted in the sea of robed and hooded faces, massed in the half shadows of the outer parts of the temple, several were not facing her, as was customary, but turned away…
Reaching the east, the high priestess smiled at a bowing Anzety, who had taken a step backwards to stand in the outer ring. Neferaset returned the greeting, before passing Snefer to him. Gently grasping the old fingers, the high priest continued the clockwise momentum around the outer circle, taking the boy’s grandmother with him. They stopped at the final point of the triangle, on a line opposite Amkhren. In a mirror of Neferaset’s earlier gesture, Anzety pointed the first two fingers of his right hand at Snefer’s eyes, then closed the gap between the fingers and pointed at the high priestess, who now stepped into the inner circle, as did Anzety, taking his place in the tri-fold structure of power, which lacked only one figure – the experienced priest who took the role of the Vessel of Mut; and who should, many hours prior, have returned from acting as envoy to one of their sister temples, a day’s walk away…
Without preamble and caring deeply for the terrified old woman in their midst, Neferaset began to speak, softly; but it was impossible to hold back the power which streamed from her in this place, and the old woman had tears running down her cheeks as the high priestess began.
“You are known as ‘Snefer’ – we honour you.”
The six other temple officers in the inner ring turned to face Neferaset’s honoured guest and bowed.
“For all our titles,” the high priestess continued. “you have truly done the work of the Gods in the raising of one fit to become a priest in this temple.” Neferaset fought back her own tears as she looked at the pride in the gleaming eyes of the bent old figure. “Tonight,” she continued. “this child of your child joins us on the path to becoming an initiate, a training which will, eventually, equip him to absorb and reflect the Will of the Gods.”
Neferaset looked for recognition of this condition and received it in the eyes of the other woman.
“You know that, from this day on, you will not able to accompany your grandson. Do you have any special words for him as he stands at this portal?”
Snefer looked across the north-south axis of the twin circles below which they had both been placed. The old voice was calm if a little ragged, “I will say, simply, that you have brought great honour on us all, Amkhren, and I know that your mother and father would have been so very proud of you. Hold them in your hearts, now . . . make them part of this moment!”
Amkhren bowed his head to his one surviving relative, “I will, Grandma, and thank you… for everything.”
Neferaset’s voice resumed its authoritative tone as brought to an end the rare indulgence of personal feelings into the sacred space of the sanctuary.
“And now the familial and the familiar must end! Let Snefer stay here and watch, as we begin Amkhren’s initiation into the company of the Gods.”
Neferaset stared at Amkhren, the gentleness passed, the authority returned. “Amkhren!” she held up one hand and all present would have sworn they saw the image of the sun held between her fingers of a hand that she let slide down to the horizontal. “Great Ra has set in his horizon. The boat of a million years has taken him where we cannot go while we live…” She opened the fingers and the perceived ball of light seemed to dissolve into the air, becoming briefly large in its final flourish, then shrinking in light and heat as it sank into an orange space.
“But, tonight,” continued the high priestess, “you must go where the river of your life has not taken you before,” She raised her right hand and fixed him with the hypnotic power of her gold-capped fingers, turning them over and forming them into hooks so that Amkhren was mentally pulled towards the east. “Follow the circle to me, now!” she commanded… Amkhren walked, slowly around the outer circle, clockwise towards the high priestess.
“Look around you, Amkhren,” said Neferaset. “Look and see them for the first time; see them not as the teachers that you knew in the seven years since I brought you, an untutored boy, from the banks of the great river; but as the forces which rule and shape our lives and the landscapes of encounter upon which those dramas are played out …” Neferaset took hold of the young man’s shoulders, turning him away from her and rotating his body clockwise so that his eyes lingered for a few seconds on each of the ritual priests before him–but not long enough for him to fix his mind on any of the details. It was like waking up from a dream into a state of total attention, only to be denied the details of the newly unfolding vision.
“Their stories will follow, Amkhren… Each will take you on a journey tonight…”
As Neferaset turned him, the glories of the Neters–the god-forms held by the temple Vessels around the inner ring of the temple–were revealed in fleeting glimpses of gold, blue, white and skin; each very different, yet each conforming to some time-honoured language of form depicting how their ancient powers were portrayed.
Here, Sekhmet, fierce and challenging; then the kindly face of Hathor, whose gaze melted him with its motherly love, making his heart ache for what had been taken away from him in childhood; then Anzety’s smiles, calm and watching, always watching, like the quiet face of the full moon, whose Neter, Khonsu, he represented in the temple. Then came Tefnut, she of the essence of moisture, the precious liquid of life. To Tefnut’s right, as he spun, was Ptah, one of the most ancient of the gods; then there was a gap, a space which, to his young and unknowing mind, felt like a wound… But then he was turned, again, and there was Thoth, wise Thoth, the giver of knowledge and writing. Finally, just before his vision spun back to take in the controlling high priestess, there was Maat, not really one of form, She of the Truth, the single feather, dancing on the breeze, the weight of the true heart …
“Three, Amkhren,” said Neferaset, now in front of him again; mysteriously, as he would swear that he had just travelled around the inner ring of the temple and away from her…
“Three stages lead to completion–your completion as a priest of the Island of Isis.”
Through glazed eyes he looked at hers. There was precision as well as caring in those eyes. She knew where this went, he did not… he tried to concentrate, but his mind would not focus, as though many here – but not all, he observed – were mentally shouting his name, urging him on. The sense of elation was taking his breath away. Had they given him the high water, the one brewed from the orange petals in the high valleys? He thought not; that was not the way of Isis – knowledge, leading to fuller consciousness, in turn leading to higher knowledge, which again led on to… the way of the true priest, the way of becoming one with the Neters, of sacrificing self, this was his chosen path, and this dimming of the light in his head was not a child of that path. What was it? It felt near… it was threatening, yet he was not sure that the high priestess sensed it yet?
“Three stages that are reflected in the greater journey of Amun-Ra,” the high priestess continued. “from season to season to season, the three of them constant for a million years.” She held up her arms and the two rings of the temple materialised in circles drawn for him in the air. “Djet and Neheh” she said, “Eternity and becoming. Tonight you will begin to understand them; tonight we will begin to open the gates in you so that their presence can make itself felt…”
The high priestess pulled back and turned to her left, looking down into the nearest ring, the Wheel of Djet. It was time to throw Amkhren to the lioness, but no ordinary lioness…
——————————–
Index to previous chapters:
Chapter One – Gifts From the River
Chapter Two – An Agony of Sunset
Chapter Three – The Dark Waters
Chapter Four – Touching the Sky
Chapter Five – The Fire Within
Chapter Seven – The Crystal Air
Chapter Nine – The Unchosen Darkness
—————————
Introduction to River of the Sun
In April 2015 a group of people gathered in the Derbyshire hills to enact the Silent Eye’s annual Mystery Play, entitled, The River of the Sun. The five-act mystical drama formed the backbone of that Spring weekend, and told the fictional story of a clash of ego and divinity set in an Isis-worshipping temple located on an island in the Nile, during the the fascinating period of the 19th dynasty, the time of Rameses the Great.
The 18th and 19th dynasties were a time of upheaval for ancient Egypt on many levels. The reign of the ‘Heretic King’ Akhenaten saw Egypt’s religious structure torn apart, as the revolutionary Pharaoh became what Wallis Budge called the ‘world’s first monotheist’; re-fashioning the power of the many Gods with one supreme entity – the visible sun disc, the Aten, for which Akhenaten, alone, was the high priest. Many have pointed to the failure of the ‘herectic’ Pharaoh’s politics, but few have doubted the sincerity of his religious vision. He will, forever, remain an enigma.
Whatever the nobility of his goal, the actions he took were ruthless, and included the shutting down of the annual deity festivals which were the sole point of ritualistic contact between the ordinary people of Egypt and their locally-worshipped gods. In addition, Akhenaten paid little attention to the domestic and military affairs of Egypt, allowing the country’s enemies to encroach on its borders, greatly weakening Egypt’s power at that critical time for the region.
After Akhenaten’s brief reign, culminating in the Pharaoh’s mysterious death, shadowy military forces took control of Egypt, instigating the 19th dynasty in the persons of Rameses I and, soon thereafter, Seti I, whose throne name derives from the god Set – often considered the ‘evil one’ because of his slaying of his brother, Osiris.
Seti I is judged by modern historians as having been one of the greatest-ever pharaohs, yet his importance in the 19th dynasty was eclipsed by the actions of his second son, the brilliant Rameses II, whose long reign of over sixty years included much self-promotion and the alteration of Egypt’s recent history. Both Seti and Rameses II (Rameses the Great) were passionate about the evisceration of the last traces of Akhenaten’s ‘chaos’, as they saw it.
But, although, by the 19th dynasty, the the ‘Son of the Sun’ was long dead and the buildings of his embryonic and doomed city of Tel-al-Armana were reduced to rubble, something of that time remained in the Egyptian consciousness. A new kind of connection between Pharaoh and God had been established, one which elevated mankind, if only in the being of the Pharaoh, to be someone who ‘talked with God’. It was, at the very least, a bold experiment and, though the world would have to wait until the 19th century to re-discover the ‘erased’ pharaoh, the philosophical waves of that period rippled out and dramatically affected the way the incoming 19th dynasty had to repair the worship of the Gods, uniting the people of Egypt under a trinity of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut.
Our fictional story is a tale of politics, friendships, mind and faith. It is set against an historically accurate background, and at a time when Rameses was due to take the throne from the dying Seti .
Returning to Thebes in his swift warship, crewed by his fearsome Talatat mind-warriors, Rameses decides to mount a surprise night-time raid on the island-based Isis temple which has prospered under the sponsoring reign of his father. Rameses suspects that the inner teachings conducted by the revered High Priestess and Priest conceal views that relate to the thoughts of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He plans to insert himself and his warriors of the mind into the islands’s Spring rites as the high priest and priestess begin a cycle of initiation for a chosen apprentice priest who has proved himself worthy of special advancement.
The resulting clash draws everyone, including the young Pharaoh-in-Rising, into a spiralling situation where each is forced to confront their own fears as well as living out the roles which life has allocated them. River of the Sun is the story of a spiritual and political encounter from which none emerge unchanged, including the man who will shortly be Pharaoh, the mighty Rameses II, whose secret name for himself is ‘the unchosen’.
Through the eyes and minds of those surrounding the chosen priest and the ‘unchosen’ Pharaoh, the River of the Sun takes us on a tense and compelling journey to the heart of power and its eternal struggle with truth.
The chapters of the book will be serialised in this blog. The finished work is planned to be available in paperback and Kindle early in 2016.
————————————————–
River of the Sun, serialised here, and its associated images, is the intellectual property of Stephen Tanham and is ©Copyright material.
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Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 41 – When Logic Dies
.Alexandra.
It had been quite a week. I had wrested with the challenge that John had thrown down: the nature of the golden-antlered doe in the Heracles story. He had hinted that it was symbolic of something that underwent a transformation in the human being; something that was a key attribute, an ability that developed as an extraordinary kind of skill at a certain point of the spiritual path.
I entered the cafe. Once more he was was there before me, folding a large sheet of paper into complex pattern of triangles. Beside him on the table was one he had finished earlier, which appeared to have six pointy legs holding it upright, in a stance that looked quite formidable, as two of the six were pointed up at me.
“Morning, Alexandra,” he said, without taking his concentration from…
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River of the Sun, Chapter Eight
The Unchosen Darkness
Darkness had just fallen when the Beak of Horus rounded the curve in the river and fixed its course on the stone landing of the Island of Gezirah al Nabatath. The ranks of the oarsmen, led by the Obion Guard, relaxed their stroke, feathering their oars as one. Menascare, known to all as the most trusted friend and arch mage of the Pharaoh elect, strode from the raised command point at the rear of the craft and stood beside his King-in-Rising in the prow, looking at the lights of torches which ringed the fringes of the temple island.
“A welcome, Majesty?” asked Menascare, seemingly recovered from his former collapse.
“No,” said the Pharaoh elect, “they could not know of our arrival. We travel in darkness for a reason…
“Then why their lights?”
“I think we join them at a fortuitous time.”
“A ritual in progress?”
“The ritual, old mage – Akhet!” he smiled indulgently at the man to whom he had looked up for so long. “Do you think I am here, at this time, by accident?”
Rameses put the wooden frame, to which was clipped the parchment on which he had been scribbling, into the pocket of his cape and leaned over the prow of the boat, thrusting his face towards his target. “Won’t that be interesting!” he said with a cruel smile. “What a shock we will deliver! Maybe we will catch them out?”
Menascare considered his next words, carefully. “But we have no evidence against them,” he said. “The whole of the black land speaks of the excellence of their work and the discipline of their methods … ” He leaned as close as he dared to the young ruler to be. “Surely we should not judge what we do not know?”
“Perhaps,” answered his royal companion. “But my father has always seemed overly supportive of this mysterious temple; and I mean to find out why!” He pulled himself upright, resting a firm hand on Menascare’s shoulders, patronisingly.
“But that is why you are here, old friend . . . to find out the truth.”
“The truth, Majesty, can be an elusive thing… and I would not begin by suspecting the rites of Isis-Mut, carried out, by all accounts, diligently, by the celebrated high priestess and her brother”
“Is not the renowned Lord Menascare the most revered hunter of truth of all those along the great river?” It was a sly response, but it illustrated the younger man’s deadly intelligence.
Menascare thought of the twist of fate that had befallen the royal house. Initially groomed for Kingship as the eldest son of Seti, Rameses’ elder brother, Nebchasetnebet, had died in a tragic accident at sixteen years of age. The family had swiftly elevated the younger boy to the position of Regent, King-in-Rising – a role for which he seemed admirably suited. Now, with the imminent death of his father, Seti, he was on his way to Pi-Ramesse to take the twin crowns and assume absolute power.
The Beak of Horus was the fastest boat on the Nile, the Obion Guard were a hand-picked cadre of royal defenders who would, unhesitatingly, put their lives at risk to defend their King-in-Rising. They were agile, strong and fearsome, though the world along the great river knew little about their existence. “Yet . . . ” whispered Menascare, voicing the last of his thoughts out loud. “Yet . . .”
The black boat approached the deserted stone pier. Four of the team of oarsmen brought it to a perfect landing, and soon the ropes held it fast. Rameses stepped onto the island, then turned and threw the writing tablet back to his teacher. Caught off guard, Menascare dropped it, then stooped to pick it up, as the others walked past him and towards the torches. He would forget all about the unfinished piece, but the fragment would remain among his records and, long after his death, would re-discovered by scholars, rendered into stone, as a great poem, and left for those searching for clues to the motivations of the man who would become ‘King of Kings’.
The Unchosen
It was not always like this.
There was not always a sleek-boat,
driving relentlessly along the great river,
in search of the white rats of the Sun.
Soon, I will be taken from here, made less by my duties.
Made king where once there was the brother.
Oh fate, how strange thy serpentine turns and twists,
But he is truly gone.
Now laughter in the darkness
Where stealth failed, now follows the vulture.
Horizons mourn for I shall not; but beware soft world,
Of he who was not chosen, your gentle time is gone . . .
Brave father, bold and faithful, now dying far from here.
No fault to you, no scarab walks your lies.
I will honour you before all others, as you did, lately, me
And though unchosen I will absorb your hate,
That what you feared might come to pass
Shall pass to me.
And, riding my head, when yours is deep within the earth
We shall hunt down
All the unfound traces of the Erased.
And fool who thinks it other, like women, washing waters,
who ebb and flow around what should be target of archers’ bows.
Brave island of Isis, now ahead in lanterns’ lights. Let them beware
For if, as sand-talk lies on the wind,
They hold harbour for such flights of mind
As those who, leaving, spoke, be true.
Then swift swords of Obion will prevail, and those that there survive
Will walk a different path,
When Great River’s banks again swell,
And fill with abundance
My coffers, gold and green will bloom
To protect noble Egypt, soon to be made mightier.
Weak white fool, let his despite live like lemon’s spit on the tongue
That each sad reflection on the riser over horizons come to nothing.
What matters lives and breathes,
Who rules carries a sword,
They that plough know nought of power
What does not live and breathe is a dream.
Who lives and breathes and dreams is a fool
Let those who live plough or make or take the sword
One man alone steers a boat, the rest empower
Swish, swish, the water from the oars.
No slaves here, the Obion are chosen,
Cousins to the blade, the whip, the Royal order.
The river is mine, at least that part which dares to hold me.
Mighty river, that I might fill thy length, as I do other women,
But so dares the arrogance of youth!
Yet time will not blunt me.
Now do I go to show the royal fire…
——————————–
Index to previous chapters:
Chapter One – Gifts From the River
Chapter Two – An Agony of Sunset
Chapter Three – The Dark Waters
Chapter Four – Touching the Sky
Chapter Five – The Fire Within
Chapter Seven – The Crystal Air
—————————
Introduction to River of the Sun
In April 2015 a group of people gathered in the Derbyshire hills to enact the Silent Eye’s annual Mystery Play, entitled, The River of the Sun. The five-act mystical drama formed the backbone of that Spring weekend, and told the fictional story of a clash of ego and divinity set in an Isis-worshipping temple located on an island in the Nile, during the the fascinating period of the 19th dynasty, the time of Rameses the Great.
The 18th and 19th dynasties were a time of upheaval for ancient Egypt on many levels. The reign of the ‘Heretic King’ Akhenaten saw Egypt’s religious structure torn apart, as the revolutionary Pharaoh became what Wallis Budge called the ‘world’s first monotheist’; re-fashioning the power of the many Gods with one supreme entity – the visible sun disc, the Aten, for which Akhenaten, alone, was the high priest. Many have pointed to the failure of the ‘herectic’ Pharaoh’s politics, but few have doubted the sincerity of his religious vision. He will, forever, remain an enigma.
Whatever the nobility of his goal, the actions he took were ruthless, and included the shutting down of the annual deity festivals which were the sole point of ritualistic contact between the ordinary people of Egypt and their locally-worshipped gods. In addition, Akhenaten paid little attention to the domestic and military affairs of Egypt, allowing the country’s enemies to encroach on its borders, greatly weakening Egypt’s power at that critical time for the region.
After Akhenaten’s brief reign, culminating in the Pharaoh’s mysterious death, shadowy military forces took control of Egypt, instigating the 19th dynasty in the persons of Rameses I and, soon thereafter, Seti I, whose throne name derives from the god Set – often considered the ‘evil one’ because of his slaying of his brother, Osiris.
Seti I is judged by modern historians as having been one of the greatest-ever pharaohs, yet his importance in the 19th dynasty was eclipsed by the actions of his second son, the brilliant Rameses II, whose long reign of over sixty years included much self-promotion and the alteration of Egypt’s recent history. Both Seti and Rameses II (Rameses the Great) were passionate about the evisceration of the last traces of Akhenaten’s ‘chaos’, as they saw it.
But, although, by the 19th dynasty, the the ‘Son of the Sun’ was long dead and the buildings of his embryonic and doomed city of Tel-al-Armana were reduced to rubble, something of that time remained in the Egyptian consciousness. A new kind of connection between Pharaoh and God had been established, one which elevated mankind, if only in the being of the Pharaoh, to be someone who ‘talked with God’. It was, at the very least, a bold experiment and, though the world would have to wait until the 19th century to re-discover the ‘erased’ pharaoh, the philosophical waves of that period rippled out and dramatically affected the way the incoming 19th dynasty had to repair the worship of the Gods, uniting the people of Egypt under a trinity of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut.
Our fictional story is a tale of politics, friendships, mind and faith. It is set against an historically accurate background, and at a time when Rameses was due to take the throne from the dying Seti .
Returning to Thebes in his swift warship, crewed by his fearsome Talatat mind-warriors, Rameses decides to mount a surprise night-time raid on the island-based Isis temple which has prospered under the sponsoring reign of his father. Rameses suspects that the inner teachings conducted by the revered High Priestess and Priest conceal views that relate to the thoughts of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He plans to insert himself and his warriors of the mind into the islands’s Spring rites as the high priest and priestess begin a cycle of initiation for a chosen apprentice priest who has proved himself worthy of special advancement.
The resulting clash draws everyone, including the young Pharaoh-in-Rising, into a spiralling situation where each is forced to confront their own fears as well as living out the roles which life has allocated them. River of the Sun is the story of a spiritual and political encounter from which none emerge unchanged, including the man who will shortly be Pharaoh, the mighty Rameses II, whose secret name for himself is ‘the unchosen’.
Through the eyes and minds of those surrounding the chosen priest and the ‘unchosen’ Pharaoh, the River of the Sun takes us on a tense and compelling journey to the heart of power and its eternal struggle with truth.
The chapters of the book will be serialised in this blog. The finished work is planned to be available in paperback and Kindle early in 2016.
————————————————–
River of the Sun, serialised here, and its associated images, is the intellectual property of Stephen Tanham and is ©Copyright material.
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+ Esoteric Meaning of Myth, Greek Myths, Higher Mind, Labours of Hercules, Silent Eye School, Spirituality
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 40 – The Obedience of the Heart
by Steve Tanham
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 40 – The Obedience of the Heart
.Alexandra.
Little furry model animals don’t normally do much for me, but this one, placed in the middle of our usual table in the cafe, made me giggle. It had big doe-eyes, the sort you’d see in Japanese comic books. With somewhat smaller eyes, at least proportionately, John was smiling at me from across the table. I took a breath, but Rose arrived with our two lattés before I could speak.
“One of my favourites, this,” he said, still grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and stealing the silent pause.
“Because it’s my birthday this mythical month?” I asked, somewhat cheekily.
He laughed. “The sign of Cancer, the crab; Glorious June…rather far in the future… won’t buy you a pressie just yet!” he said, doing his best to copy the deer’s eyes and using them to peer, pathetically, out at the dark and wet November morning. Then he added, in response to my mock frown, “Go on then, tell me the story.”
“Okay,” I said, ready. “Heracles is tasked with capturing a wild fawn, and taking in to the Temple of Apollo, the Sun-god. He finds himself looking at a beautiful landscape. On one far hill, near Apollo’s temple, he spies the female deer, but, as he looks at it, the voice of Artemis, the huntress, comes from the disc of the moon, overhead, and warns him that the animal is under her protection and that she has nurtured it from its infancy.”
“Very good,” said John. “Was it Artemis alone who warned him off?”
“No,” I answered, “The mighty Diana, the sky huntress dear to the Gods, claimed ownership of the fawn, too. Both said they had guarded it to maturity.”
As I spoke, John leaned forward, as though listening intently, though there was nothing wrong with his hearing. In so doing, he inadvertently pushed his hot coffee mug towards my left hand, lying flat on the table top. I could feel the heat and my hand moved, automatically, away from the scalding pot.
He seemed not to notice my discomfort. “So Heracles had an easy time of this one?” he said. “He just used his powers to capture the fawn, knowing that the temple to which he was to return the creature was that of Apollo, the greatest of the Gods?”
“No–” I said, conscious that my left hand had again flinched away from something hot. I looked down and saw that his cup was, again, very close to my skin. His eyes were on me, as though boring into my soul. It could only have been a repeated accident, so I continued. “–far from it! The two goddesses spent a year helping the golden-antlered fawn to evade Heracles, despite his great skills.”
“But he caught it, eventually?” said John.
“Yes…” I replied. “After a year of trying – it was rather sad. In his exasperation, I presume, he shot at the fawn and wounded its foot, Unable to flee, it was captured and carried by Heracles into the temple of Apollo, and remained there, claimed and healed by Apollo himself, despite the protestations of Artemis and Diana.” Suddenly, I became conscious of the burning, again. “Bloody hell!” I exclaimed, “You’ve got to be doing that deliberately!”
With eyes like a cobra his gaze never left mine, not even looking down as I moved my hand far away from the hot mug to show him what he had been doing. “And what did the fawn symbolise?” he asked, apparently unbothered by my outburst.
There was that funny ringing in my head when he said this. He had set up one of his situations while we were speaking. What was the link between my singed skin and the fawn?
“Did you need to use reason to decide to pull away your hand?” he asked, continuing to look at me intensely.
I was calming down – knowing that there would be a noble motive behind the idiot’s actions. “Reason?” I muttered, still hurt with the idea of being burned like this, even though the pain had been slight. “No, of course not – my body knew exactly what to do in reaction!”
“So it did,” he said. The intense and unsettling gaze was subsiding. “And the fawn represents that instinctive nature… but this fawn was taken from its natural state, hunted for a year by a hero, shot at the point on its body where it made contact with the earth, and then carried, lovingly on the breast of Heracles, into the highest of temples…”
There was a noise in my head that was not a noise but something more profound–more like a beating of wings…Something was opening up. I grasped at what he had said, the slight pain in my little finger forgotten. “So, an instinctive ability, not requiring reason, is hunted, despite the grasp of two goddesses, and, though wounded, successfully delivered to the Sun-god in his temple?”
“Where it heals and is returned to the same hillside on which Heracles first saw it.” His eyes had resumed their normal kindly state. The cobra stare had gone. He was now sitting back in his chair, the offending mug transferred to its normal duties.
“So, what was transformed, or rather, re-homed?”
I didn’t want him to tell me. I knew this was important. “Can I have a week to think about that?” I asked, watching him smile and nod into the latté.
———————————————————–
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is usually published on Thursdays.
All images and text ©International copyright, The Silent Eye School of Consciousness, 2015.
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Sue’s memories touch a cord…
As soon as I was considered old enough to wander alone… a ridiculously young age by today’s standards… I would knock on the doors of the various elderly relatives that lived within a stone’s throw of home or school. Their doors opened onto another era that to my young eyes qualified as the ‘olden days’. There would inevitably be a cup of tea; none of your new-fangled tea bags or ‘gnats water’, but the rich mahogany brew that seethed in perpetuity beside the flames of the range. If I was lucky and timed it right, there would be a slab of fruit cake topped with a slice of tangy cheese or perhaps a curd tart, or we might toast a teacake in front of the fire on the toasting fork and I would sit and listen, fascinated as the old ones spoke of their lives.
Between my great-grandparents and their…
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Chapter Seven
The Crystal Air
The great candles hissed and spat, casting off acrid fumes that were masked by the sweet incense rising from the copper burners, made to an ancient formula which spoke of purple flowers in the night. Their light was bright, and cast flickering shadows off the sacred objects in the temple which became dancing forms that flowed across the walls like the mental ghosts of the shadow, the enemy within that the young priests had been trained to see.
The silence in the temple of Isis was so profound that the slightest variation of breathing on the part of any of the temple officers could be heard. Anzety turned to face the eastern wall of the temple. In his mind, Neferaset came forward from the darkness of that inner east and stepped up to meet him, taking his hands and her usual position as the head of ritual… but, this time, she wasn’t here. She was waiting for his signal, beyond the bronze doors of the sacred chamber. The temple was his to command.
Saluting the east, and the great statue of Isis overseeing all that went on in the temple of the sun, he turned to look at the swelled ranks of those who had come to celebrate the inner meanings of the festival of Akhet – and the elevation of the island’s chosen priest. The forces represented by the figures of the triumvirate of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut, symbolically united in their shadowy figurehead of ancient Isis, waited in expectant and respectful silence as he began the rite of Akhet.
Such was the power of the priest…
Anzety held up his hands, palms turned towards the sky; welcoming all in a silent gesture of respect.
He stepped forward into the inner ring, the Wheel of Djet, symbolising eternity, and followed it around the circle, clockwise, extending his arms to all present. “Many of you have travelled from the far lands to be with us at the time of the great inundation – Akhet. We welcome you to our Temple home, where life is devoted to the worship of the Divine Feminine, through the worship of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut, expressed in the service of the supreme goddess, Isis.
“It is customary at the time of Akhet, for us to bring to initiation the most promising of the apprentice priests. Today we honour a young man named Amkhren, an orphan, alone in the world apart from his grandmother. Amkhren was adopted for temple apprenticeship seven years ago by our own High Priestess, after a chance meeting by the great river that revealed some of his promise.”
Anzety studied the faces around him. Most he recognised, but there were a few who were strangers – not unusual for such an occasion, as the priests from other temples would rotate in their attendance, especially as this was seen as an honour–given that the temple of Isis at Gezirah island was sponsored by Seti, himself. Anzety did his best to calm a growing sense of unease. Regaining the east, he bowed to the images of Amun-Ra and Isis, then turned once more to face the visitors.
“An initiation must also be a trial for it to stir into action the hidden chambers of the heart. The worship of Isis is centred in such magic. The young man will be safe through these trials,” Anzety paused, thinking back to a similar occasion, a long time ago… “but he does not know that. For him, this will be a life and death challenge, and we ask you all to hold the dread of that in your hearts, to help fill Amkhren’s next moments with the needed feelings.”
Anzety raised his head to address the Guardian in the far west of the temple. “Guardian!” the white-robed figure stood to attention. The black and gold bands, running diagonally from his shoulders to his waist, reflected the shimmering light of the flames. “Open the temple doors and admit our Sister, the High Priestess, Neferaset; Amkhren, the one whose trial has come; and his proud grandmother, known to us as Snefer, the bent one, our trusted temple servant. This will be the last time his grandmother is allowed to accompany him in his sacred duties, and we do this to honour her devotion to his upbringing amidst such hardship.”
The temple guardian struck the huge brass gong three times. The temple reverberated with the pure resonance of the sound and its harmonics, which took long seconds to fade. “Brethren of the temple,” said the guardian, in a voice that matched the fading sound of the gong. “stand tall and, in the way sacred to your own traditions, honour the entrance of the high priestess and her charges.”
Those in the temple straightened, holding their heads high. Some held their hands over their hearts, using one hand or two, some held their hands upwards forming a part square; others simply bowed their heads. The temple guardian looked to the high priest for his signal that the next part of the rite should begin. Anzety made a slight movement of his head, then stared down, for a second, at the altar in the middle of the sacred space, lending his love and will to what lay ahead for the boy. In doing so, he did not notice the frantic eye gestures of the guardian, trying to communicate something urgent to him…
——————————–
Index to previous chapters:
Chapter One – Gifts From the River
Chapter Two – An Agony of Sunset
Chapter Three – The Dark Waters
Chapter Four – Touching the Sky
Chapter Five – The Fire Within
—————————
Introduction to River of the Sun
In April 2015 a group of people gathered in the Derbyshire hills to enact the Silent Eye’s annual Mystery Play, entitled, The River of the Sun. The five-act mystical drama formed the backbone of that Spring weekend, and told the fictional story of a clash of ego and divinity set in an Isis-worshipping temple located on an island in the Nile, during the the fascinating period of the 19th dynasty, the time of Rameses the Great.
The 18th and 19th dynasties were a time of upheaval for ancient Egypt on many levels. The reign of the ‘Heretic King’ Akhenaten saw Egypt’s religious structure torn apart, as the revolutionary Pharaoh became what Wallis Budge called the ‘world’s first monotheist’; re-fashioning the power of the many Gods with one supreme entity – the visible sun disc, the Aten, for which Akhenaten, alone, was the high priest. Many have pointed to the failure of the ‘herectic’ Pharaoh’s politics, but few have doubted the sincerity of his religious vision. He will, forever, remain an enigma.
Whatever the nobility of his goal, the actions he took were ruthless, and included the shutting down of the annual deity festivals which were the sole point of ritualistic contact between the ordinary people of Egypt and their locally-worshipped gods. In addition, Akhenaten paid little attention to the domestic and military affairs of Egypt, allowing the country’s enemies to encroach on its borders, greatly weakening Egypt’s power at that critical time for the region.
After Akhenaten’s brief reign, culminating in the Pharaoh’s mysterious death, shadowy military forces took control of Egypt, instigating the 19th dynasty in the persons of Rameses I and, soon thereafter, Seti I, whose throne name derives from the god Set – often considered the ‘evil one’ because of his slaying of his brother, Osiris.
Seti I is judged by modern historians as having been one of the greatest-ever pharaohs, yet his importance in the 19th dynasty was eclipsed by the actions of his second son, the brilliant Rameses II, whose long reign of over sixty years included much self-promotion and the alteration of Egypt’s recent history. Both Seti and Rameses II (Rameses the Great) were passionate about the evisceration of the last traces of Akhenaten’s ‘chaos’, as they saw it.
But, although, by the 19th dynasty, the the ‘Son of the Sun’ was long dead and the buildings of his embryonic and doomed city of Tel-al-Armana were reduced to rubble, something of that time remained in the Egyptian consciousness. A new kind of connection between Pharaoh and God had been established, one which elevated mankind, if only in the being of the Pharaoh, to be someone who ‘talked with God’. It was, at the very least, a bold experiment and, though the world would have to wait until the 19th century to re-discover the ‘erased’ pharaoh, the philosophical waves of that period rippled out and dramatically affected the way the incoming 19th dynasty had to repair the worship of the Gods, uniting the people of Egypt under a trinity of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut.
Our fictional story is a tale of politics, friendships, mind and faith. It is set against an historically accurate background, and at a time when Rameses was due to take the throne from the dying Seti .
Returning to Thebes in his swift warship, crewed by his fearsome Talatat mind-warriors, Rameses decides to mount a surprise night-time raid on the island-based Isis temple which has prospered under the sponsoring reign of his father. Rameses suspects that the inner teachings conducted by the revered High Priestess and Priest conceal views that relate to the thoughts of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He plans to insert himself and his warriors of the mind into the islands’s Spring rites as the high priest and priestess begin a cycle of initiation for a chosen apprentice priest who has proved himself worthy of special advancement.
The resulting clash draws everyone, including the young Pharaoh-in-Rising, into a spiralling situation where each is forced to confront their own fears as well as living out the roles which life has allocated them. River of the Sun is the story of a spiritual and political encounter from which none emerge unchanged, including the man who will shortly be Pharaoh, the mighty Rameses II, whose secret name for himself is ‘the unchosen’.
Through the eyes and minds of those surrounding the chosen priest and the ‘unchosen’ Pharaoh, the River of the Sun takes us on a tense and compelling journey to the heart of power and its eternal struggle with truth.
The chapters of the book will be serialised in this blog. The finished work is planned to be available in paperback and Kindle early in 2016.
————————————————–
River of the Sun, serialised here, and its associated images, is the intellectual property of Stephen Tanham and is ©Copyright material.
Sun in Gemini 
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