The Mummy Sutra: Becoming the Stars

[Spread out in primordial ages over the yawning gape of chaos, the mat of reeds is coming apart, and no center remains stable]: BOOK OF THE DEAD

It is said that the desert will return to reclaim its treasures of civilization, just as death returns to claim your body. Against this there are charms, a:

talisman

Everything must be reassembled, and bound together again. The desert disintegrates, but its arid breath can preserve organic matter in a desiccated state for aeons. Take a talisman:

the ANKH, buried away as a symbol of Lives [preserved, pressed to your lips], carried to all the four quarters by Horus of the Horizon, setting upon the House of the Sun. What does it say that Archeologists found Prehistoric cosmetic palettes for the application of make-up accompanying most mummified remains? A sign of Life.

We will all go forth day by day to the process of decay and rot, powerless not to cling to every last sip of life. Should we really be bothered by the fact that bodies and minds fray? come unraveled? that eventually the gooey parts start oozing out? No wonder the ol' Egyptians mummified their dead. Keep all the spare parts aside sealed neatly in canopic tupperware until ready for use. Won't the gods have the last laugh, come judgment day when Hearts are weighed? The rest of us scratching around for our crumbling femurs or dropped jawbones, and Lo and Behold, out of her sarcophagus/limousine steps Queen Nefertiti or was it Hatscheptsut?

in a vintage rumpled linen and resin-dyed gown, looking absolutely gorgeous: a tanned piece of human jerky with eyeliner. They said human beings were not built to last beyond a certain point with any degree of dignity. The papyrus with have the last laugh: there are ways of coping with loss, and incantations that can freeze-frame the Body of a Civilization.

CHILD HORUS must grow, and weep for the death of his father, whose dismembered and scattered form must be gathered [by his mother] from all the four directions.

[Horus sings a hymn to the Setting Sun]

They wore jackal masks while embalming (undertaking the art of seasoned flesh). This was also a process of beautification. These were the preparatory priests of Naked Death; they bandaged the slow-cured and taxidermy carrion they deified in a dry-seal atmosphere of layers upon layers.

Spouting Hymns: [Anubis chants a hymn to the Rising Sun] saying,

take This, with plenty of beer, for it is the spittle of Ptah, protector of Speech—whole reams of incantation and poetry are born therein!

who Hawks a loogey \

and realms are birthed/

Again they wore jackal masks for the finality of funereal rites, the emptying of carnal chasms, and the measuring of Salt, channeling the desert in the bloodstream...

The viscera, as you know, were lovingly enshrined in canopic jars.

But did you know that the text of the BOOK OF THE DEAD was wrapped into the mummy's linens, along with other charms and amulets? Body of Text indeed!

You could call The Mummy Sutra a Do It Yourself Manual of sorts (passage of The Sun’s nightly journal). Speaking of which, the text is not really called The Book Of the Dead. A better translation would be: The Book of Coming Forth by Day.

D.I.Y of salting, preparing your earthen organ jars for reintegration in the new age groove of our Jackal Presters: the Pantheists.

Wolfman and Crew will help this reintegration, to bind your scattered limbs.

(Make again the Journey of the Sun’s Nightly Passage) to find them.

Because you are the knot of the god within the holy tree, doubly beautiful one, who are more splendid than Yesterday because you are walking Today the path of Tomorrow.

Anthropologically complete, what with the VIOLATING THE TOMB OF KING TUT [which i’m glad i wasn’t responsible for] and all. In Denial.

YOU WILL BE AFFLICTED BY A CURSE--to hear in your head for the rest of your days, this Song:

row row row your boat/gently down the stream

merrily merrily merrily merrily/

life is but a dream

In the Nile/

great gaping chasm of light transmits the golden images\\:

Screen, unblinking Devourer of attention! (JACKAL MASKS) but we had seen too many horrors at the movies to not be monster-paranoid, or to flinch at

the Tongue of the Jackal, pressed to our ear; although possessing

the Heart of the Scribe (preserved in a jar).

Baboon Man, he writes with a stylus made of papyrus

snips and snaps to

make a span: a Boat made of papyrus reeds that have been twined together using some kinda Ink Trick, made from soot, describing the poetry of DREAMBOAT incantations in the public fervor over

the Death-Mask of TUTANKHAMEN, blessings and curses.

In PAPYRUS MARSHES: the Reed-Mat set the Blue Lotus and the Golden Lotus in a place of honor and prestige, channeling the Nile just so that they could have enough moisture for it,

[the golden offering cup is shaped like a lotus]: Take this Beer! May you rise again tomorrow to shine upon your statue!

'Cause in lotus buds were symbols of the rebirth of rivers, rebirth of humans, but above all: The Rebirth of Cats.

That's right: the Egyptian word for cat is MIW. Scribe's helper, destroyer of mice and magical mystical preserver of Libraries and Granaries [Meow!]

/mummified people

cured ideas blooming in a desert flower feeds

parallel lives\

procured by "The Egyptian Beautification Process:"

cornrows and neon, meets

the neolithic make-up palettes—in forms of fish and turtles—eye-liner and rouge: both Men and Women wore these cosmetics.

They wanted to see your Form in its former glory

bound to the ground

being salted and cured/ treated with salves and resins/

before or after the linen bindings were wound 'round the cadaver?

Sometimes it takes hundreds

of meters of wrapping

to shroud a single human body.

These, then, are the rites of Anubis:

sometimes spelled out in hundreds of meters of text encircling your remains, forming

a bond with the Jackal

in priestly preparation

by Book Binding

with tongue and heart the knots of

the Final Rites.

May you be restored!

May your Heart be with you in the House of Hearts!

"It’s all been done before,"

Baboon Man begins, there in the House of Hearts,

"Book Binding, we start with the fingers then toes/progress by hands and feet/ give us swaddle swath of bandage leafage of verb lettuce-wrapped in spittle dog-eared Pages with amulets between wrapping tightly cutting binding to gums/stretching words, bound in geometry/ the torso the rest of the trunk branches TUCKED-IN The Arms and the Torso. Yes."

(now give yourself a big hug!) ALL DONE!

Preserving a ghost in the process

while emulating an Ancestor who wanted to be

a human burrito, or empanada.

Jackal scavenger (oversees) as Undertaker

a bandaging of your

eviscerated trunk, salted, and fully cured for the outlay of the symmetrical geometrical patterns forming the bandaged under-weave of the death-mask?

Thus the Banished-One remains, in mimicked remnants of facial muscle

and finds form clinging to salted meats in

mummification procedures millimeter by millimeter. Subsisting for millennia.

This was where many dog-eared Pages were found, the skin of the calf,

it was a true obsession, and why? The Coptic monks wrote on calf-skin to tell their versions of the ancient tales.

ANUBIS is their Greek transliteration of sorts, not the shape of an Egyptian Name in pictures;

so who was the African Golden Wolf? Said to be the true Anubis, not a jackal.

The desert will return, there is no doubt about that...

FEEL THE BURN: but dry heat preserves flesh quite well.

They even mummified Cats for the goddess Bastet, Bulls for Ptah, Ibis for secretarial Thoth.

So thoughtful, he really is; but

what did THOTH the Ibis have to do with book-binding? there was no book-binding in those ancient times when scrolls were spineless!

BOOK OF THE DEAD, constantly scrolling,

where he said that you can pick your friends/

and you can pick your nose\

but you can’t pick your friends’ noses.

However, the real Hook was

(Horus of the Dawn and the offering of the Blue Lotus)

the brain-hook (it goes on and on and on) pulling out the goo.

[SCROLLING]

The Child Horus knows what is to come: thumbsucker

w/his royal security blanket, he is presented w/

a blue lotus-cup offering of antediluvian Moscato from the one hand of his aunt Nepthys

(OPENING OF THE MOUTH CEREMONY)

finger to the mouth,

slobber on the infant’s finger,

the side-lock of childhood and princes: he is Horus of the Dawn.

[WEIGHING THE HEART CEREMONY]

Your sterile fertility was then unmasked as futility in the splendor of judgment, because you really do not want to be devoured by that strange beast on the far right there. He eats you into nothingness, but not damnation.

Never forget, if you want to be remembered, to use a

Hook, and a Title like

Teenage Mutant Ninja Horus Hawk-winged mystery sign [a sigh]

Horizontally

ran the river

runs the stream\\:

in fertile futility

Cyclical flooding by

Progressive/Regressive byways

which go the way of all flesh, each

behind its ritual mask

[walk like an Egyptian]

under the silence of the shroud, blessed by

Teenage Glory’s Falcon Form.

Horus of the Horizon honors the

eviscerated taxidermy talisman

that goes the way of all flesh. But, there are

Fresh Linens for all Guests in that Great House!

But first thing's first: we don the Jackal Mask,

drain the blood,

remove the brain and vital organs,

salt and season for longevity. Let it rest [for months] and then

bind (tightly so tightly)

the fingers/

toes/

hands/

feet/

torso/

limbs/

head/

and finally, the FACE.

Pin-point the gift-wrap with small offering amulets BOUND IN THE BUNDLE, coating it with resins saps and salves:

to become star-shine, reflection of both Yesterday and Tomorrow,

and so claim a corpse-flower wrapped for the ghost-gods' stellar clamor, mourned on the restive wings of Isis and Nepthys, who knew the healing spell to end all healing spells, scribbled on a ream of papyrus. It was for this reason they

wrap you in these many miles of linen and meters of text,

a bundle of joy like a babe in swaddling clothes, reborn BETTER THAN EVER, a subterranean amulet and latent charm. Dust to take its place among the Stars/

in the Next Generation

[a Living Memory].

NOTE:

Ancient Egyptian funeral practices went through many transformations throughout the 3,000 years of the culture's history. In the Old Kingdom (time of the Pyramids), the spells effecting the soul's identification with Osiris Lord of the Underworld were written on the walls of the tomb's inner chambers. They are called the Pyramid Texts:

Next came the aptly named Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom period, where the incantations were written on the interior panels of the wooden sarcophagus.

Finally, in the New Kingdom, they took to writing the text on papyrus scrolls and wrapping it in with the mummy when it was entombed, as close as possible to the body of the deceased.

THE END