Are We In The Age Of Horus?

By James Donahue
 

There is a story in Egyptian mythology that goes like this: The goddess Isis married her older brother Osiris and they were deeply in love. Set, a demon of envy, set about to destroy their happiness. Set murdered Osiris. Then, to prevent the possibility of his resurrection, he dismembered Osiris' body and scattered the parts in various places along the Nile River. When Isis learned what Set had done, she asked Troth, the god of Eternity, to stop the flow of time for a while. With time stopped, Isis traveled up and down the banks of the Nile, recovering all of Osiris' body parts before the sun set. When she found all of them, she performed the Black Rite, bringing Osiris back to life. After that eternity gave birth to Time again, and history continued on. Horus is the child of this love between Isis and Osiris.

In his introduction to The Book of the Law, a brilliant and catastrophic work penned in 1904, Aleister Crowley described the world from the eyes of the occultist. He said the world is entering the Age of Horus, and therefore is going through a period of violent change.

Crowley explained that certain vast stars, or "aggregates of experience," may be described as gods. Each god has been in charge of the destinies of the Earth for periods of about 2,000 years. In the history of the world, Crowley said it is believed there have only been three such Gods. They are:

--"Isis, the mother, when the Universe was conceived as simple nourishment drawn directly from her; this period is marked by matriarchal government." In other words, women ruled the governments of the world. They were seen as goddesses.

--Osiris, the father, began his reign about 500 BC. At this time the Universe was imagined as catastrophic. Crowley said love, death and resurrection were the ways by which individuals built up experience. Kings ruled the earth during this period. The period of male domination is slowly changing, but the shift has involved a world-wide political upheaval. Women fight for equality in Middle Eastern countries. The Pope rules over the Roman Catholic religion from his throne in the Vatican. Americans still choose men to fill the office of President.

--Now Horus, the child, is coming into power. Crowley wrote: "this period involves the recognition of the individual as the unit of society. Every event, including death, is only one more accretion to our experience, freely willed by ourselves from the beginning and therefore also predestined."

Horus is a combination of twin gods called Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-Paar-Kraat. He is symbolized as a hawk-headed god when on his throne.

In 1904 Crowley wrote the following description of the social changes we would experience as Horus comes into power. It is an uncanny picture of the events we are currently living. He wrote:

"Everywhere his government is taking root. Observe for yourselves the decay of the sense of sin, the growth of innocence and irresponsibility, the strange modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bi-sexual or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with a nightmare fear of catastrophe, against which we are yet half unwilling to take precautions.

“Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral growth is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, health crazes, occultism in nearly all its forms, religions sentimentalized to a point of practical extinction. Consider the popularity of the cinema, the wireless, the football pools and guessing competitions, all devices for soothing fractious infants, no seed of purpose in them. Consider sport, the babyish enthusiasms and rages which it excites, whole nations disturbed by disputes between boys. Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us unmoved and hardly worried. We are children." 

So how do we grow from such a state? Can there be another ruler to follow Horus? Some say it will be Maat, the Egyptian goddess of truth, balance, order, law, morality and justice.