CURSE OF PHARAOHS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 15

CURSE OF PHARAOHS

OPENING OF TUTANKHAMEN’S TOMB NINETEEN DEATHS We read recently a list o£ thirteen English and six French people who have met with sudden or violent deaths, the link between these nineteen people being the tact they were present at the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb, writes Leonora Eyles in the “Sunday Express.” A murmur of Egyptian black magic seems out of place in this materialistic twentieth century, but a series of accidents like this makes one wonder whether such curses, profoundly believed in by many people, have any

reality in them or not. Most people have heard of the “unlucky mummy” in the British Museum, which seems to have brought extraordinary disaster on people who

interfered ■with it in any way, and some of us have heard rumours of the mummy case with a bad history on board the Titanic when she went down. There are attested tales of disasters that met the people who brought the so-called Cleopatra’s Needle to this country, and inscriptions on mummies in the British Museum fell of similar disasters.

How much of this is believed in by experts one does not know —but it is a fact that no benches are provided in the mummy galleries in the British Museum. Do the authorities there think it is not well to loiter among these things even now?

I believe in them; I have read a little Egyptology, and perhaps a little more occultism. You may not believe in them, but it may interest you to know how the power of these curses is supposed to have come about. In various periods of ancient hygyptian history various beliefs were held having to do with the safeguarding of the dead, and elaborate precautions were taken by the wealthy to provide marvellous tombs for their bodies. For one thing, dead bodies were used in many religious orgies during debased periods of the religion. The dead flesh of a baby, for example, especially if It had never known separate existence, was pounded to a paste and smeared over the bodies of the priests to help mediumship and to facilitate them in leaving the body and returning to it safely during certain rites.

At another period it was believed that the soul returned to the body after long years and it was a matter of precaution to preserve the body by mummification so that the soul should not wander about homeless. Another school of thought believed that the soul would not return to earth so long as the body remained whole and lifelike.

Thus a man would erect his tomb to safeguard his dead body even before he took much thought for his dwellinghouse, and he would fill it with numbers of tiny figures called ushabtis, of which there are numbers in the British Museum, usually made of blue or green clay—doll-like figures made in the form of living people. Possession of these ushabtis by the dead person mean that his soul could, in the spirit world, call on the soul of the person represented to be his slave. Among the priests and the great a much stronger protection was given, and it was always so in the case of a Pharaoh, since the Pharaoh was the arch-priest, initiate of all the mysteries —those mysteries in which the Book of Exodus tells us Moses was learned. Powerful Occultists These priests were probably the most powerful occultists and magicians in the world’s history. They could apparently leave the body at will and, among other powers, practised a type of hypnotism unknown to the modern world. When a great person was about to die the priests would take slaves and torture them in ways too horrible to mention today. When, after a long period of this torture, the slave was at the point of death and reduced to such terror that he was entirely the “creature” of his torturer, he was given a strong Jjypnotic suggestion and then put to death, his soul being bound captive to a certain place or thing, imbued with the one idea put into it during those days of agony. Thus many of these entities would be attached to the tomb of so great a person as Tutankhamen, discarnate Intelligences with only the one com maud laid upon them: Destroy! Destroy! Destroy! When the tomb, or mummy case, or jewel protected by such a thing is molested, the thing attaches itself to the intruder, bringing with it the atmosphere of hell. Feelings of horror, depression, and wretchedness follow, ending often in suicide; nerves are shattered, and apparently normal accidents happen, such as a motorcar smash; sometimes a gun goes off under a man’s hand, or his control on the wheel of his car is shaken; perhaps the health is undermined by these feelings of depression, and a small chance Illness meets no resistance.

The unhappy slave soul, having obeyed its ancient command, is in some cases free; it enters the world of the dead as one having lately left the body. In other cases it goes on striking to the end of time or until an exorcist can set it free. If excavation of the relics of ancient Egypt is to go on, clairvoyantes who can see these bodyless things, and exorcists who can free them, should go with the scientists and “disinfect” the places thoroughly. Science is to the jvorld today what magic was to the ancient world. By science today we move the great stones, for instance, that magic once removed by creating a vacuum round them. As a physical civilisation advances, magic dies, which is as it should be, since science can be in the hands of the many, while magic, which costs its practitioner such rigorous discipline of mind and body, could always only be for the few.

But science can no more combat the powers of ancient magic than mere air can bore a hole through stone, for they are different elements, operating on different stages of being. Fight ancient black magic with Christian -white magic. The people who say “Can these things be? Can such evil be allowed in the world today? Is not God stronger than the devil?” should call to mind the dipk theria bacillus, the tubercle bacillus, and all the rest of them. Good may be stronger than evil, but it does not fight evil unless it is shown where the evil is, and given its set job to do.