In Egyptian symbology the Nile was closely associated with Aquarius in a dual sense reflecting the double wavy signs of the glyph. There were two rivers in their conceptual system, which existed in heaven and on earth. The Celestial Nile was believed to flow from beneath the throne of Osiris while the Terrestrial Nile arose in ‘the place of the Two Rocks,’ a stone cavern reminiscent of the rocky birthplace of Capricorn.
It was on an island in the Celestial Nile that Horus [god of sky and sun] was born, symbolizing Jati or the new birth, and it was in a similar setting along the worldly Nile that men were afforded the means of obtaining a ‘new birth’ in consciousness. In this initiation, the candidate’s level of spirituality was tested and evaluated: the androgynous god Hapi held the vessels that overflowed with the waters of celestial and terrestrial life, and the Ego could choose between the two streams. In one, he embraced Divine Wisdom or Thoth-Hermes and entered fully into Aquarius; in the other he plunged again into the River of Forgetfulness.
At Esneh in Egypt there is a planisphere which depicts the goddess Maat with her arms fully outstretched like the beam of a scale. She represents unchanging Truth and Equilibrium and is seated beside Hapi, the Water-Bearer, who is the ‘Man made Perfect.’ Her two arms point to the past and future and her head is an upraised feather which balances the consummation of evolution.
The combined figures symbolize the equilibrium of balanced harmony and synthesis which are the hallmarks of the Aquarian influence. After the breaking up of the old, the loosening of the bonds, there is a formation of the new which reflects the essentially synthetic nature of soul-evolution. After ages of culling the wheat of wisdom from the dead chaff of form, it is brought to the portals of culmination. Thoth-Hermes, the Instructor and Initiator is repeatedly connected with Hapi as both the bearer of the water vessel and keeper of the Gates of Heaven. The Egyptians held that drinking the Supernal Waters provided the key to the Immortal Gates. The Book of the Dead records this in vivid prose:
May the abyss of water be opened to me by Tehuti-Hapi (Thoth-Hapi), the lord of the horizon in my name of Opener.
The abyss of water referred to is the primordial watery abyss, the cosmic ocean, which existed at the time of creation and from which the creator sun god Ra arose. This water is like the powerful solvent which the Alchemists called Aqua Regia because of its ability to dissolve the ‘noble’ metals, thus enabling the reformation into new forms to take place. In the same way, the primordial waters act as a Alkahest (transformative element) which eventually will restore all compounds to their primeval essence and man himself to his spiritual home, as a new Man.
The horizon alluded to here is the meeting place between heaven and earth, and Thoth-Hapi, its Lord, is the Divine Wisdom which becomes manifest in the fully Aquarian mind.
Both reason and intuition become balanced like the arms of the goddess Maat. Like the other airy signs, Aquarius tends to harmonize and synthesize that which, in some contexts, would seem to be at odds. But to express fully the fruits of this ability requires a separation out from common lines of thinking and a courage to fully explore entirely original modes of thought and expression. In this sense Aquarius and the other airy signs are like spiral movements which permit the completion of an upward curvature along the evolving zodiacal wheel. That this takes place in the case of isolated individuals, there is no doubt, but it is the universalization of this ability which is longingly anticipated by all those who are not steeped in gross materialism.
♦️ ♦️ ♦️ ♦️ ♦️ ♦️ ♦️
