Ba and the ba-bird

I included a painting of Anubis weighing the heart of the deceased in the last post of the Egyptian myth of Osiris. It's a fascinating scene and this figure in particular (right), captured my attention. It's a bird with a human head, what the Egyptians called a ba-bird, one of several soul-forms that survives the death of the physical body. The ba included the mobile parts of the personality, those intangible aspects of being that made an individual distinct. But the ba was not equivalent to what we think of as the ego. I found references (but not the actual text) to a papyrus that records the dialogue between a man who wants to die and his ba, which refuses to cooperate.

The Egyptians believed that everything, even inanimate objects, had a ba, and they were right. Everything does have a unique character, a distinct, singular presentation. There are thousands of rocks on the hillsides around our cabin, for example, and no two are alike.

According to the Egyptians, every individual also had a ka, or life-force. This was your portion of the universal life energy of the cosmos. Physical death occurred when the ka left the body, and the ba had to leave then too. The ka lived on after the physical death. If the ba found the ka and reunited with it, they could return to the body, revive it, and achieve eternal life. This was the purpose of mummification and why the integrity of the dead body was important. Seth's rending of his brother Osiris's body into fourteen pieces was more than gruesome; it was intended to make any kind of return impossible.

So the ba-bird represents a kind of individual soul (birds often play the role of soul or spirit in mythology) and the ka is life force. These concepts are not unfamiliar to us and you might share my enthusiasm for the images, but there's more to ponder, and this is the heart of the myth of Osiris and Isis, and the subtext of the story of Dionysos and the Bacchae that I posted last month. It's the idea of a concealed, underlying unity that gives rise to all the specific manifestations that make up the world. Underneath this phenomenal world is another. This is one of the lessons of the moon, who disappears for three days and returns, giving birth to herself.  The Greeks talked about zoe and bios; zoe is the impersonal, universal force of life itself; bios,the specific manifestations, like you and me, for example, that spring from it or are infused by it, temporarily.

The many partake of the One in a magnificently varied, cyclical round of being. I watch the house finches nesting under our eaves and listen to the dancing leaves of the cottonwoods and wonder how I might grasp this, how it might change my life by making me more aware of death, and by extension, of what is valuable.

Image of a Ba-Bird on a Footpiece from a Coffin. Egypt. Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 22, circa 945−712 B.C.E. Wood and plaster, painted, 11 x 12 5/8 x 5 5/8 in. (28 x 32.1 x 14.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum