Attributes of Ma'at:
Goddess of Truth, Justice, Reincarnation, Law and Divine Order
Wife of Thoth ( Tahuti )
Referred to in pyramid texts as "the food and drink of Ra", meaning that without Ma'at, even Ra had no Life Force
Judges were reguarded as Priests of Ma'at
When the Court of Pharaoh moved to Thebes, Ma'at became merged with Sekhmet, much as Thoth was merged with Ptah
Ruled with Ra as His Daughter in Heliopolis
Weighed all the souls of the deceased against Her Feather, the symbol of Truth during the Judgement of Anubis in the Hall of Judgement
Often pictured holding a Scepter and an Ankh
Even the Gods obeyed Her Laws as symbolic of Eternal and Divine Order. (to "live in ma'at")
The seated image of the Goddess, wearing an Ostrich feather on Her head, was held in Pharaoh's hand like a doll and was presented as an Offering to the Gods.
I have put a lot of thought into exactly what to write about Ma'at..She who is an embodiment of a concept, far more than a Goddess possessing human attributes. It makes perfect sense to me that the ancient Egyptians would have placed Truth as the consort/wife of Thoth, the Magician of words. It is all too brutally obvious when we read our newspapers, magazines and listen to radio or watch television that our world today seems to have lost sight of that possibility.
In this century even now fading away, we have seen the terrible devastation brought about by the power of words used to twist minds and bend spirits into strange and horrible shapes. I recall studying about something called "propaganda" when I was in grade school. We were shown films of Adolph Hitler screaming and pounding his fists while hundreds of people stood in awe of his ferocity and passion. That one man's words, and the use of them, directly led to the slaughter of millions of people; the horror of the Holocaust and the blood price paid by the Romany people, the starvation and horror of concentration camps and the misery of the slave labor camps that the Slavic peoples were subjected to in forced labor.
We, as a civilization, have progressed from a species who communicated through a pictorial world, to a verbal world , to a written world, and now, through the magic of cyber, to a world of light and images. This path of change has taken humanity thousands of years to achieve, but we need to ask ourselves is if what we have achieved as human beings will lead us into the stars or into the pits of flame and absolute annihiliation.
We look forward to a new Millenium, not just a new century.
As this Aeon marches towards its ending in the next months, let us reflect back on the changes of just this last 100 years. Someone born in 1905 has seen more changes in the human condition in the last 95 years than happened since humans crawled out of caves and looked at the Moon in awe and saw a God or a Goddess looking down on them.
Sixty six years after this current Thousand years began a comet crossed the skies and the Battle of Hastings changed human history. William the Conqueror faced Harold Godwynson and the result of that Battle brought European feudalism into England, and a central government. British Common Law is a direct result of that event. The Doomesday Book was also a result, the first recorded census. Hundreds of years later, brought on by the colonial expansion of England during Queen Victoria's reign, British Common Law and the english language were carried to all corners of the world. Not everyone was happy about this, either; but as a result english became a world language, uniting peoples from everywhere under one common language for the first time since the Legions took the language of Rome out into the known world.
We not only have covered the face of our planet, but we have watched as one of us walked on the surface of the Moon and came back to tell us of it. We speak to each other in the silence of our computers, watch each other from television and film and the wars and sadnesses of people on the other side of the world are known in minutes, not months.
Perhaps now, more than at anytime in human history we need to look back on the lessons learned and take the wisdom of our ancestors and study into their beliefs for something to hold onto. The Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs saw the importance of words, and knew the Power that ideas made manifest can hold. The marriage of Truth to the Power of Words may be exactly why we need to look back to Egyptian Religion; to find and retrieve for our time now, a sense of personal responsibility for the things we say and write.
Ma'at, an Ideal personified, can become a Standard to which we can intentionally hold our words accountable. No one person can change everything in the world, but in the words of the Chassidic Rebbe, the Bal Shem Tov, "...to change one life is to change a Universe."
Look to Ma'at when you are communicating and examine carefully to see if your own words are an expression of your own inner Truth, or being used to achieve another objective altogether.
