A seeker is someone with questions, someone who is searching for answers. Often the answers are not to be found readily in the easy places. Those things have already been found. No, a seeker is willing to go to desolate regions, to go to lengths and depths, to find the answers to the hidden mysteries and the ultimate questions. Why are we here? What is my purpose? Is there a God?
Seekers Upon Sand
In Latin quaestionem is "seeking, questioning, inquiry." A question mark used at the end of the sentence denotes a question. What is a question mark? It looks something like a shepherd's crook. A shepherd looks for his lost sheep. A shepherd is a seeker. A question mark also looks like a sickle (from PIE root *sek- "cut"). A seeker, is a *sek-er, a seeker cuts through the rubbish to find answers.
Celtic Sickle -Omega Art Works
A question mark is also somewhat like the curved beak of a falcon. In ancient Egypt Seker / Sokar (Greek Sokaris / Socharis) was a funerary falcon god sometimes depicted as a mummified falcon. He was the patron deity of the necropolis for Memphis and came to be associated with Ptah, the patron deity of Memphis in Lower Egypt, and later Osiris. He was sometimes referred to as "Seker-upon-his-sand" or "He who is upon his sand." His domain was known as Imhet ("filled up") a difficult sandy region (or region filled up with sand) of the underworld / world of the afterlife (duat), hour 4 of Ra, the sun's, nightly journey.
Seker-Osiris (and Seker upon his Sand[top])
Notice the shepherds crook scepter, called heka and flail, nekhakha, that he is holding. The shepherds crook and flail were insignia of kingship, originally having to do with the Predynastic Egyptian god Andjety.
So, Seker has the question mark scepter, and exclamation point flail. The flail may cause one to cry out, exclaim, like the cry of a hawk. Ouch! It is interesting that the hieroglyph for sand / grain is a little circle or dot, like a period (.), or the dot under the question mark (?) and exclamation point (!). We could say that the question mark is "the heka upon the sand", or the crook of the seeker upon the sand, and the exclamation point is "the cry of the one upon the sand", or the falcon's cry in the desert.
The city of Saqqara / Sakkara / Saccara served as a necropolis for Memphis, which was the capital of Egypt in the Old Kingdom on the West side of the Nile, 12 miles south of Cairo. Saqqara lies west of Memphis in the sandy desert area.
Ptah-Seker-Osiris, god of resurrection, Middle Kingdom
The desert, sandy area, called the Red Land (Desheret, dšrt "red one"), was a fitting place for burial because the Egyptians were concerned with the preservation of the body after death. Moisture = speedy decomposition. They believed that a part of the soul, the ba, remained with the body after death.
It is also fitting in that the desert is a place of testing. It is through the trial of death that one hopes to emerge from it regenerated and enlightened, and fit to enter the land of the gods. Like Jesus' forty days in the "desert" or "wilderness", it is a place of mortification and renewal / strengthening, death and rebirth. The drying process of the body being prepared for mummification was also forty days.
Desert comes from Old French, desert "desert, wilderness, wasteland; destruction, ruin" and Late Latin, desertum "thing abandoned". In ancient Egypt the desert, i.e., desheret, was the land of Set, the god of chaos, confusion, storms, wind, and foreign lands, and came to be vilified and associated with evil.
Sahara Desert
Seker inhabited the fourth and fifth hours of the night on the soul's journey to morning. The forth hour is the a place of deep darkness, isolation and silence. There, in Imhet, Seker assists souls at the hour of their greatest testing. What does one discover in this dark night? When one is tested in Imhet (or could we say emet, Hebrew meaning "truth"), we get to the truth. The soul must enter the darkness of the tomb, like the womb, and be born again. There is a reason for the darkness and isolation. Something wonderful is being formed in hiddenness and will emerge out of the "suffering". When one reaches Imhet, even though it is a harsh place, one knows morning is imminent, which is comforting.
Think of the kind of plants that grow in arid regions, like the prized resins of myrrh and frankincense trees which were used in mummification. Myrrh is thorny and harsh looking.
Commiphora Myrrha
Frankincense can grow in extremely unforgiving terrain, even, at times, from solid rock. The myrrh and frankincense resin is gathered by slashing the bark of the trees, it "bleeds" out, and the "tears" are then collected when they harden. But this doesn't kill the trees, they keep on going.
Boswellia Sacra - Frankincense
A certain kind of pungent alluring sweetness arises out of the harsh environment. And also healing or medicinal qualities and aide. Hedy as a name from Greek has the meaning "sweet, pleasant, agreeable, delightful", from hēdonē (from Ancient Greek ήδονη) "pleasure, delight" and the goddess of the same name. When one is desperately in need of assistance (as one might easily be in the desert) aide is very sweet. Aide is succor.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser is a tomb located in Saqqara. It is the oldest of the Egyptian pyramids. In the tomb one was aided into the afterlife. There was succor in Saqqara for those entombed there.
It's funny that it looks a lot like a sugar cube pyramid. People used to give children a sucker for succor after getting hurt or getting shots.
Our words for sugar and sucrose are very much related to Seker and the desert. But, how can dessert have anything to do with the desert? They are so different, except for the names, of course. However, we might want to ask ourselves why the names are so similar if they have nothing to do with one another? Maybe they, in fact, have a lot in common.
I'm not suggesting that the god Seker had any connection with sugar because he was a Predynastic Egyptian god, and sugar is a fairly recent participant in human history. However, sugar from, Old French sucre (in Latin saccaron, Greek sakkaris) was first brought to the western world from India by the Arabs around the fifth century A.D. when they discovered how to extract and crystalize the sugar and it could be easily transported. The Arabic word for sugar is sukkar, and qandi refereed to the boiled sugar cane. The ancient Indian Sanskrit word for the sugar crystals or grains taken from the cane is khanda. The Arabs brought this sugar(khanda/sukkar) through the desert (in Arabic çahra, like Sahara), to places like Egypt. The sugar came from the Sahara desert to make desserts. In Sanskrit sarkra / sharkara is "gravel / grit", or what we call "sand", and came to mean "ground or candied sugar". So in this sense sugar is a type of sand.
Sugar Crystals or Grains, like sand
Saqqara in Arabic is pronounced with a glottal stop in the middle, and sounds a lot like how we say "Sahara". The god Sokar / Seker was "he who is upon his sand". So the Arabic word for desert, çahra has something to do with the land of Sokar, i.e, Saqqara, a sandy place, the desert.
Since sugar is produced as grains / "sand" it seems natural that it would come to be associated with the word Seker. In Turkish the word for "sugar / candy" is in fact, seker.
Swirl Lollypop or Sucker
Twist Lollypop
Candy Canes / Crooks, photo by Julie O.
Sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun with Crook and Flail
Call me crazy, but there seems to be a lot in common here with the crook and flail regalia and the shapes in which we make these popular candies. Sweet!
We also make cotton candy out of spun sugar. Cotton candy has a soft airy look, like clouds. Clouds are light and ephemeral. "Ephemeral" is from Greek ephemeros , "lasting one day, short-lived".
In Japan the cherry blossom is called sakura. Sakura is the symbol of the ephemeral. They are there one day, beautiful and delicate, then they are gone, like a sugar high. They don't last long.
Sakura - Cherry Blossoms, Japan
A spiritual high can be ephemeral too. You can spend forty days in the desert, reap the sweetness that comes out of the harshness, only to find yourself, in not too much time, looking / seeking to find another high.
Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage generally termed "rice wine" in America. Starches in the rice are converted into sugar during the fermentation (a process of transformation) which makes the alcohol. In Japanese the word sake means "liquor" and refers to all alcoholic drinks in general. Here again, the sweet effects of the alcohol are fleeting.
The effects of alcohol may be ephemeral, however as the saying goes, a certain truth comes from its consumption, "In vino veritas". Truth (emet) is the domain of a seeker, just as Imhet is the domain of Seker. So, we might say that the sugar in alcohol is succor / aid to the seeker, who may be a sucker for the truth.
As I like to say (mixing metaphors), "If the truth hurts . . . wear it." Nobody said it was easy to be a seeker. But when you find the truth you will fly free, like the falcon, for, ". . . you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Jn 8:32
Freedom is a sweet reward . . .
Seekers Upon Sand
In Latin quaestionem is "seeking, questioning, inquiry." A question mark used at the end of the sentence denotes a question. What is a question mark? It looks something like a shepherd's crook. A shepherd looks for his lost sheep. A shepherd is a seeker. A question mark also looks like a sickle (from PIE root *sek- "cut"). A seeker, is a *sek-er, a seeker cuts through the rubbish to find answers.
Celtic Sickle -Omega Art Works
A question mark is also somewhat like the curved beak of a falcon. In ancient Egypt Seker / Sokar (Greek Sokaris / Socharis) was a funerary falcon god sometimes depicted as a mummified falcon. He was the patron deity of the necropolis for Memphis and came to be associated with Ptah, the patron deity of Memphis in Lower Egypt, and later Osiris. He was sometimes referred to as "Seker-upon-his-sand" or "He who is upon his sand." His domain was known as Imhet ("filled up") a difficult sandy region (or region filled up with sand) of the underworld / world of the afterlife (duat), hour 4 of Ra, the sun's, nightly journey.
Seker-Osiris (and Seker upon his Sand[top])
Notice the shepherds crook scepter, called heka and flail, nekhakha, that he is holding. The shepherds crook and flail were insignia of kingship, originally having to do with the Predynastic Egyptian god Andjety.
So, Seker has the question mark scepter, and exclamation point flail. The flail may cause one to cry out, exclaim, like the cry of a hawk. Ouch! It is interesting that the hieroglyph for sand / grain is a little circle or dot, like a period (.), or the dot under the question mark (?) and exclamation point (!). We could say that the question mark is "the heka upon the sand", or the crook of the seeker upon the sand, and the exclamation point is "the cry of the one upon the sand", or the falcon's cry in the desert.
The city of Saqqara / Sakkara / Saccara served as a necropolis for Memphis, which was the capital of Egypt in the Old Kingdom on the West side of the Nile, 12 miles south of Cairo. Saqqara lies west of Memphis in the sandy desert area.
Ptah-Seker-Osiris, god of resurrection, Middle Kingdom
The desert, sandy area, called the Red Land (Desheret, dšrt "red one"), was a fitting place for burial because the Egyptians were concerned with the preservation of the body after death. Moisture = speedy decomposition. They believed that a part of the soul, the ba, remained with the body after death.
It is also fitting in that the desert is a place of testing. It is through the trial of death that one hopes to emerge from it regenerated and enlightened, and fit to enter the land of the gods. Like Jesus' forty days in the "desert" or "wilderness", it is a place of mortification and renewal / strengthening, death and rebirth. The drying process of the body being prepared for mummification was also forty days.
Desert comes from Old French, desert "desert, wilderness, wasteland; destruction, ruin" and Late Latin, desertum "thing abandoned". In ancient Egypt the desert, i.e., desheret, was the land of Set, the god of chaos, confusion, storms, wind, and foreign lands, and came to be vilified and associated with evil.
Seker inhabited the fourth and fifth hours of the night on the soul's journey to morning. The forth hour is the a place of deep darkness, isolation and silence. There, in Imhet, Seker assists souls at the hour of their greatest testing. What does one discover in this dark night? When one is tested in Imhet (or could we say emet, Hebrew meaning "truth"), we get to the truth. The soul must enter the darkness of the tomb, like the womb, and be born again. There is a reason for the darkness and isolation. Something wonderful is being formed in hiddenness and will emerge out of the "suffering". When one reaches Imhet, even though it is a harsh place, one knows morning is imminent, which is comforting.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Mt.5:4At your darkest hour the greatest of transformations and transfigurations is commencing.
Think of the kind of plants that grow in arid regions, like the prized resins of myrrh and frankincense trees which were used in mummification. Myrrh is thorny and harsh looking.
Commiphora Myrrha
Frankincense can grow in extremely unforgiving terrain, even, at times, from solid rock. The myrrh and frankincense resin is gathered by slashing the bark of the trees, it "bleeds" out, and the "tears" are then collected when they harden. But this doesn't kill the trees, they keep on going.
A certain kind of pungent alluring sweetness arises out of the harsh environment. And also healing or medicinal qualities and aide. Hedy as a name from Greek has the meaning "sweet, pleasant, agreeable, delightful", from hēdonē (from Ancient Greek ήδονη) "pleasure, delight" and the goddess of the same name. When one is desperately in need of assistance (as one might easily be in the desert) aide is very sweet. Aide is succor.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser is a tomb located in Saqqara. It is the oldest of the Egyptian pyramids. In the tomb one was aided into the afterlife. There was succor in Saqqara for those entombed there.
Step Pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara, Egypt
It's funny that it looks a lot like a sugar cube pyramid. People used to give children a sucker for succor after getting hurt or getting shots.
Sugar Cube Pyramid
Our words for sugar and sucrose are very much related to Seker and the desert. But, how can dessert have anything to do with the desert? They are so different, except for the names, of course. However, we might want to ask ourselves why the names are so similar if they have nothing to do with one another? Maybe they, in fact, have a lot in common.
I'm not suggesting that the god Seker had any connection with sugar because he was a Predynastic Egyptian god, and sugar is a fairly recent participant in human history. However, sugar from, Old French sucre (in Latin saccaron, Greek sakkaris) was first brought to the western world from India by the Arabs around the fifth century A.D. when they discovered how to extract and crystalize the sugar and it could be easily transported. The Arabic word for sugar is sukkar, and qandi refereed to the boiled sugar cane. The ancient Indian Sanskrit word for the sugar crystals or grains taken from the cane is khanda. The Arabs brought this sugar(khanda/sukkar) through the desert (in Arabic çahra, like Sahara), to places like Egypt. The sugar came from the Sahara desert to make desserts. In Sanskrit sarkra / sharkara is "gravel / grit", or what we call "sand", and came to mean "ground or candied sugar". So in this sense sugar is a type of sand.
Saqqara in Arabic is pronounced with a glottal stop in the middle, and sounds a lot like how we say "Sahara". The god Sokar / Seker was "he who is upon his sand". So the Arabic word for desert, çahra has something to do with the land of Sokar, i.e, Saqqara, a sandy place, the desert.
Since sugar is produced as grains / "sand" it seems natural that it would come to be associated with the word Seker. In Turkish the word for "sugar / candy" is in fact, seker.
Swirl Lollypop or Sucker
Twist Lollypop
Candy Canes / Crooks, photo by Julie O.
Sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun with Crook and Flail
Call me crazy, but there seems to be a lot in common here with the crook and flail regalia and the shapes in which we make these popular candies. Sweet!
We also make cotton candy out of spun sugar. Cotton candy has a soft airy look, like clouds. Clouds are light and ephemeral. "Ephemeral" is from Greek ephemeros , "lasting one day, short-lived".
Ephemeral Clouds, Southern California - photo Julie O. / chtonickore
Cotton Candy
Sakura - Cherry Blossoms, Japan
A spiritual high can be ephemeral too. You can spend forty days in the desert, reap the sweetness that comes out of the harshness, only to find yourself, in not too much time, looking / seeking to find another high.
Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage generally termed "rice wine" in America. Starches in the rice are converted into sugar during the fermentation (a process of transformation) which makes the alcohol. In Japanese the word sake means "liquor" and refers to all alcoholic drinks in general. Here again, the sweet effects of the alcohol are fleeting.
Sake Set - Cherry Blossom White
The effects of alcohol may be ephemeral, however as the saying goes, a certain truth comes from its consumption, "In vino veritas". Truth (emet) is the domain of a seeker, just as Imhet is the domain of Seker. So, we might say that the sugar in alcohol is succor / aid to the seeker, who may be a sucker for the truth.
As I like to say (mixing metaphors), "If the truth hurts . . . wear it." Nobody said it was easy to be a seeker. But when you find the truth you will fly free, like the falcon, for, ". . . you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Jn 8:32
Freedom is a sweet reward . . .
![Seker-Osiris (and Seker upon his Sand[top])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seker#/media/File:BD_Sokar-Osiris.jpg){kind=link}
Seekers end up finding desolate regions, the truth which hurts to know/be and sweet victory which does not last, but the enduring freedom from caged thought uncages the spirit. And you know what they say about free spirits...
ReplyDeleteLook at this list Google generated for synonyms of "free spirit". More than a few of them come along with negative connotations:
ReplyDeletenonconformist, dissenter, dissentient, protester, rebel, renegade, freethinker, apostate, heretic, schismatic, recusant, seceder, individualist, free spirit, maverick, unorthodox person, eccentric, original, deviant, misfit, hippy, dropout, fish out of water, outsider
Um hum. . .
Delete"But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. . . we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal 4:30-5:1)
If the fruit of a person is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then they prove themselves to be of the Spirit, and therefore free to do as they choose. Which is a heretic(Greek hairetikos, "able to choose") or free spirit by certain peoples reckoning, with negative connotation, regardless of their fruit. But this is not the message of Christ or the gospel.
"If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." (Gal 5:6)