Egypt

A peek at this mysterious land that once gave birth to the most advanced civilization on Earth.

All authors, from the Father of History downwards, have generally agreed in considering the pyramids of Egypt as magnificent and regal sepulchres; and the sarcophagi, etc., of the dead have been found in them when first opened for the purposes of plunder or curiosity.

In Africa the natives still dig round about the modern gum-trees to find the buried treasure that oozed from other trees which stood on the same spot in the forests of the far-off past. The Natural Genesis contains the second half of A Book of the Beginnings, and completes the author's contribution to the new order of thought that has been inaugurated in our own era.

I have written other books, but this I look upon as the exceptional labour which has made my life worth living. Comparatively speaking, 'A Book of the Beginnings' (London, 1881) was written in the dark, 'The Natural Genesis' (London, 1883) was written in the twilight, whereas 'Ancient Egypt' has been written in the light of day. The earlier books were met in England with the truly orthodox

THE work consists of a group of Hermetic books, which have been called the Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead. It is not, indeed, strictly a Ritual in the more extended sense of that term, but consists of several Hermetic works divided into separate chapters, each preceded by a title indicating its purport, and each principal section followed by directions explaining its use.

For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common and ordinary thing, for what reason priests lay aside their hair and go in linen garments.