Egypt 2012: Part 4 – The Black Altar at Karnak Temple

Karnak Temple

Karnak temple is only a few miles outside of Luxor. The temple is connected to Luxor temple via a row of hundreds of carved sphinxes – nothing like the size of the famous Giza sphinx, but with each one being at least man-sized or slightly larger that makes for one hell of an impressive sight when you see them lined up in a vast avenue. There is a dowsable energy ley line linking the two temples of Karnak and Luxor along which the sphinxes are placed.

Talking of impressive, the Karnak temple complex covers a vast area in itself. With several generations of pharaoh adding their own impressive extensions to the original temple there ended up being six distinct “pylons” or gates before an invasion of Persians then Romans put a stop to the proceedings. In addition to the huge main area dedicated to Amun-Re (the Precinct of Amun-Re), there are smaller satellite temples dedicated to the female deity Mut, and their son Montu. This makes the place sound quite simple – in fact it is incredibly complex having been presided over the at least thirty pharaohs.

The Aura of the Scarab Statue

The final touch is the inclusion of a sacred lake, and a scarab beetle statue which has a myth attached to it concerning it being a wishing status. The idea is to walk around the statue seven times in an anti-clockwise direction and your wish will come true.

I started the dowsing in the middle of a crowd of tourists at the scarab beetle statue. M wanted to walk around the scarab, so I let her. She was the only one doing this at first, but within two circles she was being joined by others who were copying the idea. By the fourth time around she had about 20 people circling around with her! I began to dowse when she started the perambulation. Was she generating any energy doing this, I wondered. She was, it seemed. I took a reading of the aura of the statue at that point. It was about ten feet wide.

As she continued to circle and more people joined her I could feel the aura expanding. I kept taking readings all the way through her walk. The aura seemed to be expanding faster than I could take dowsing readings! The more people that joined in, the faster the aura expended. Soon I had to stop at the lake that was 20 feet away because the aura was heading out into the water! She came back to join me. I didn’t ask what she’d wished for. It was for her to find out if such ideas came true.

The Rays of the Sun Diffracted

Many people who talk about ancient Egypt will talk about the relationship between the people, the Gods, the priests, the Pharaohs and the Sun. Few talk about how this relationship was managed. Fewer still ever mention the reasons why the Sun was so important. Sure, you will hear the usual simplistic explanations concerning “fertility”, “crop production” and “the eternal giver of life”. All true, of course. But is there something more esoteric to this relationship between Divine and Devoted? Let me venture to suggest that there is a magickal relationship in this equation too. Nowhere on my trip to Egypt was this magickal relationship better expressed than at the mighty temple of Karnak.

The revelation came to me right at the beginning of the journey into the temple structure. We were getting our usual introductions to the place and the ground plan model was shown to the group of largely disinterested visitors. I was very interested, though.  Because I was something. I saw the spatial relationship between each of the “pylons” or gates that separated the six sections of the main temple, and I realised where I had seen that relationship before – when I had been measuring the width of the rainbow-coloured frequencies of subtle energy around standing stones and stone circles.

It’s not a great representation, but you get the idea, right? The red frequency (root chakra) is the widest. The distance from the ‘first’ pylon to the ‘second’ was the largest distance. The distance between each pylon reduced proportionately in a way that I recognised until the final enclosed small temple room was reached. Now, the number of “pylons” of thresholds is debatable. Officially there are six. If you count the entrance to the room where the altar is situated then you could consider that there are seven thresholds to cross. Here is my re-interpretation of the site plan:

I had to get to that room – there were things I needed to know! All in good time, I thought. Let’s test some other things first, like the most powerful energy at Karnak?

The Pineal Temple and the Altar of Magick

I had been following the dowsing rods having instructed them to find “the most energetic place in the whole temple complex“. I was very excited when they led me to the shaded final temple in the long row of pylons. It was the final temple! I threaded through the throngs of visitors to get inside the covered temple. Unfortunately, others were heading there for the shade, and at least two parties of Russian tourists were having tours in there when I tried to dowse my way in.

Inside the shady temple there stood one artefact – a square altar stone of dark colour. Around its base were hieroglyphs, and all around the walls surrounding it were more of the same inscriptions. The rods crossed over the top of the altar – this was the most energetic place in the whole complex. One thing struck me – it wasn’t because this was the place that most people visited and paid respects to – this wasn’t charged with adoration energies from anyone in the last hundred years, that was for sure. Now it was a stone of idle tourist curiosity. What it had once been was anyone’s guess!

The following information about this interesting altar (or pedestal) stone says this:

” This court leads to a granite barque shrine built by Alexander the Great’s short lived successor, Philip Arrhidaeus, though it perhaps replaced an earlier shrine of Tuthmosis III. It is made up of two halves, consisting of an outer area where offerings were made to the god, and an inner area which still contains the pedestal upon which the god’s barque rested. Here, the inner walls. are adorned with scenes of offering rites, with Amun appearing in both his usual anthropomorphic and his alternative ithyphallic forms. The outer walls still depict various festival scenes, some still retaining much of their original brightly colored paint”  [My emphasis]

….But of the many monuments associated with Tuthmosis III, none fared better than the temple of Karnak. Wall reliefs near the sanctuary record the many gifts of gold jewelry, furniture, rich oils and other gifts offered to the temple,. mostly from the spoils of war, by Tuthmosis III. He was responsible for the Sixth and Seventh Pylons at Karnak, as well as considerable reconstruction within the central areas of the temple

(source: Tour Egypt)

It’s not a pedestal stone. I can tell you that. It’s an altar stone. Things happened on this stone. The energy here is different from anywhere else, and that’s not because it was a place where golden barque’s were rested.

The main Amun-Re temple has officially six pylons. Further pylons have been added as extensions going out in different directions. To my mind, though, there is a seventh pylon in the main temple – or at least, it may be more accurate to say, there is a seventh threshold before reaching the black altar stone. Personally, I think this is significant to the energy work or magic that was performed by those who had entry to the inner sanctum of the temple. I felt that if one were to approach the altar by going through each of the thresholds in the correct way, mindfully, then a significant energy charge could be accumulated. This was only a theory, a feeling. One day I may try this out if I go back.

Remember that information about Tutmosis III! It will become relevant for the next post. In the next post I will tell you about my encounter with the special Spirit of Place at Karnak, and how I found some energy that I had never dowsed before.

Gwas.