January 17: the feast of Wagy

 

January 17, Egypt way

The festival of Wagy was celebrated in honour of Osiris, on the 17th day of the first month of the year. On that date, funerary gifts were given to the dead. In ancient Egypt, the New Year was the day on which Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, rose together with the sun – known as a heliacal rising. At least, that was the theory. In practice, the Egyptian calendar was not fixed (it not taking the quarter day into account), which meant that every four years, the New Year moved one day. It meant that the calendars realigned only every 1460 year (365 times 4).
In Ptolemaic times (3rd century BC), the Canopus Decree stated that the New Year and thus the calendar should become fixed. The New Year was fixed on July 20; Wagy was thus celebrated on August 8. If, however, as is now the custom, we anchor the New Year on January 1, then the feast is celebrated on January 17.

The day of the dead

The festival of Wagy was the day of the dead. The first traces of this cult date from the 4th Dynasty, which is also the dynasty of the Great Pyramid and its neighbours on the Gizeh plateau. On that day, the families came to the tombs of the deceased, with offerings, performing rituals, specifically “fumigations” – producing fumes – smoke. The ceremonies were often followed by a funerary meal. This is very similar to the Christian festivals that are celebrated on November 1 and 2, which also have a specific focus on remembering the dead and are in some countries known for their particular meals.
Raphaël Bertrand has translated a contract found in Assiout, which states: “Contract between the governor and director of the priests Djéfaïhâpy, rightful in voice, agreed with the clergy of the temple of Upuat, lord of Assiout, to the effect that a white bread will given to him by each person for the said statue which is located in the temple, the 18th day of the first month of Akhet, the day of the feast of Wagy, and for the funerary priest, reciting the formulas of glorification for the deity, to leave behind a torch illuminated for him conform to the manner in which it is customarily done, each time the rituals of glorification are performed for the dead, the day on which the torch is lit in the temple.”
We thus find ourselves reading about a death mass, where the souls are commemorated by their families – with the light of the torch perhaps reminding us of the light of the souls.

Wagy, Ouag, and Uak

As is usual, the name of the festival is written depending on the language. In English, it is customary to call it Wagy, in French Ouag; Wallis Budge, though archetypically English, called it Uak. Budge gives many direct references to the Egyptian rites, which state clearly that the dead person is identified with Osiris and his star, Sah, “the lord of the vines in the festival of Uak”. The ritual tries to bring back the souls to the Duat – the equivalent of the Christian Purgatory. “You rise with the star of Sah in that part of the sky; you lay down the star of Sah in the western part of the sky. Your third is the stat Septet, the seats of which are pure, and it guides you along the beautiful roads in the sky towards the Reed Fields.”

Towards Rennes-le-Château

New Year today, in the Christian world – as everyone knows – falls on January 1. This means that the festival of Wagy, in a Christian calendar, is on January 17. This is a notorious date, through its promotion by the so-called Priory of Sion. In the final analysis, January 17 is a date that is intimately connected with the tombs of Rennes-le-Château… and thus there is another link with the dead, especially with the infamous tomb of Marie de Nègre d'Ables and the death of Jean Vie… and the heart attack of Saunière, which would result in his subsequent death, on January 22, 1917. The spectacle of the “blue apples” is also visible inside the church of Rennes-le-Château, and provides us with a further link towards Egypt, if only because of the colour blue, which is often linked with Osiris.

The cult of Osiris

The cult of Osiris was especially popular in the final centuries of the Egyptian empire. At that moment a time, a copy of the Oseirion, as built in Abydos, was constructed underneath the Gizeh plateau. This “tomb of Osiris” was discovered in the year 2000, due to the efforts of Gizeh director Zahi Hawass. It was situated at the end of a subterranean system. It is a tomb, surrounded by a small pool of water. In appearance, it is therefore similar to the Oseirion in Abydos, though in Gizeh, we find it on a much smaller scale – as well as underground. Hawass noted that this tomb was the centre of an intense devotion, where the ancient Egyptians left many funerary gifts, especially statues and steles.
This type of funerary monument is similar to the “sacred tomb” that is located in the South of France, in Arles-sur-Tech. Here we have a magical tomb, which has a mysterious relationship with water too.
The famous “Sainte Tombe” is in the abbey of the town and is an old – dating at least to the 4th century – and heavy sarcophagus in marble. The “miracle” is this: every day, the tomb fills up with a quantity of water (a litre per day on average). The water is very pure and many give it curative powers. Though one litre on average, there are times when the tomb has so much water it spills over. The tomb has, on occasion, produced as much as 800 litres per year. And it should be noted that despite the quite intense public and scientific scrutiny, there seems to be no trickery or other easily available explanations. In short, it is a genuine mystery, with many of the characteristics (tomb and water) shared with the “tomb of Osiris” in Egypt.

On the French website of the Société Perillos, in the first part of The Rise article, we know that this tomb, in Arles-sur-Tech, was of great importance not only to Saunière, but also to his sponsors and the organisation they belonged to. Is it a coincidence that these organisations have also, for many centuries, been interested in the mystery of Perillos?

The cult of the dead

Budge speaks of the Pyramid Texts, where there is abundant mention about another magical text, which reads: “those who are within the tombs, look on high and return your […] and measure the grain in front of your face. You rise from the left-hand side, you are strong on the right-hand side.” This also underlines the importance of wheat and grain in the festival. For sure, in bread and wine, we are faced with the ingredients of a meal, such as in the Last Supper.
In ancient Egypt, the grain was the symbol of the sperm of Osiris. I propose that the grain was also the symbol for the soul in the “Reed Fields”, the symbol for the souls that are with god, and which could not – or were not required to – return – reincarnate. For the Egyptians, the grain that was placed in the soil, was the dead Osiris, which would germinate – rise. The germination of the grain was thus symbolic for the germination of the spiritual body – essence – of the dead…. And often this was depicted by grain sprouting from the mummified body of Osiris.

Relics

The magic of ancient Egypt is most clearly expressed in the Hermetic texts, which are Greek renditions of the Egyptian tradition, and thus more easily understandable to our modern way of thinking. In the treatise Asclepius, there is talk about the “animation” of the statues with a “sensus” and a “spiritus” of the gods, or other souls. It states that “our first ancestors have discovered the art of creating deities. They mixed a virtue, taken from the material world, with the substance of the statues and afterwards, because they could not create souls, after having evoked the souls of the demons or angels, they introduced these in their idols through divine rituals, so that the idols have the power to do good and bad.”
This magic was well-known to men of the Renaissance era, such as Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno, all experts in this type of magic.

Towards Perillos ?

In Perillos, Saunière has directed us towards the presence of a “Tomb of Jesus”. He left this “clue” on his famous model. Jesus, as is well-known, ended up – either by accident or design – living the passion of Osiris: like Osiris, he would be betrayed during a supper; the Last Supper. He was condemned to death and died, but would rise, to become the king of the world… or the underworld, as was the case with Osiris.
We note that in the village of Perillos, there is a known tradition of a “tomb of God” that people know exists somewhat outside the village itself, where people left offerings. Some of these gifts involved small statues.
Is there a possible link with a “tomb of Osiris”, on the Egyptian model? We note that the cult of Osiris was dispersed across Europe during Roman times, even as far north as England. To find traces of this cult in the South of France would thus not be an anomaly… or cause any surprise. At the same time, we note the presence of Egyptian statues in the caves of the Pyrenees, as well as Menorca, which is the subject of Wanderings of the Grail, written by André Douzet.

Abydos – the centre of a cult of the dead

After the death of Osiris, the first person to rise from the dead, there is talk about the dispersion of the various parts of his body. Seth, his assassin, cut the body of Osiris in fourteen – some renditions say sixteen – parts, throwing them across the land of Egypt. The head of Osiris was, for obvious reasons, very important. It was placed in a coffer, and buried in Abydos, which became the main centre for his cult. It was in Abydos that the rituals of the reconstitution and revivification of Osiris from the dead were most widely celebrated. It was also the place par excellence where the ancient Egyptians hoped to be buried…
We note that the rite of resurrection – the Rise – itself was performed by Horus, the divine offspring of Osiris. The rituals that were performed here are now known to us, due to the efforts to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs, by the likes of Champollion and those who followed in his footsteps.

This may seem far removed from France, but it is not. We note that in a novel written by Jean Robin, tackling the subject of Rennes-le-Château, he speaks about the discovery of the penis of Osiris, the only part of his body that officially was never found by his wife Isis. To conceive Horus, she had to resort to using a wooden penis – thus Horus had a magical birth – not unlike Jesus himself. For Jean Robin, the discovery of this penis was directly associated with the mystery of Rennes-le-Château… and by extension with January 17.

The tomb of Arles-sur-Tech is thematically identical to the cult of the tombs of the dead in Egypt. We know that Saunière – and the Priory of Sion in commemorating him – were interested in January 17, the 17th day of the New Year, or the day of the dead in the Egyptian calendar. Saunière drew our attention to two specific places, identified on the model, and linked with Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea. Is this a mere coincidence, or do we need to look towards this “coincidence” and see it within a larger framework in which certain rituals were performed? Should we see his expeditions in the light of a cult of the dead?

Filip Coppens
with thanks to Isaac ben Jacob