Book of Thoth

So the text that we're looking at is actually called Conversations in the House of Life.

And it's actually a new translation of what is referred to as the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth.

Now, the book of thought, you say that to a lot of people who are outside of academia or academic adjacent, they're going to have all sorts of things in their head.

But this particular text is, it is an actual primary source material from ancient Egypt that the newer, this translation was put forth by Richard Jasnow and Karl Theodor Zausik.

No, it just sounds like you have a lisp.

I asked because actually in the 60s and 70s, everybody would have recognized that name because there's the Book of Thoth.

And it was like, it was, I know, I know.

The, the, the, um, that's, it's where tarot cards were born from actually.

Cause even like in the twenties and thirties, there was like the, this, the magic spirit, you know, craze was going on like in both of those time periods.

Like there was, um, people that were trying to figure out like magic and, um, Starting like cults having to do with, you know, weird occult type things.

And the Book of Thoth was a big feature of that.

So I probably will do an episode on the Book of Thoth by itself.

Brother Ike Baker is back, and as usual, the plan quickly gives way to the conversation.

Ike joins me ahead of this year's Esotericism and Freemasonry Conference in Seattle, where he'll explore some remarkable parallels between Masonic ritual and an ancient Egyptian initiatory text known as the Book of Thoth.

We also get into Wilmshurst, Rosicrucianism, freedom of conscience, and the strange persistence of initiatory ideas across cultures and centuries.

Then we wander further afield to the Cathars, Martinism, and the Eleukon, the esoteric tradition of southern France, and the books and conspiracy theories that sent us both down these roads in the first place.

In addition, in 1801, he wrote for his journal, Adrastea, a long poetical dialogue titled Hermes and Pymander.

The two figures who appear in Corpus Hermeticum I Shortly after, in his Manière de se recréer avec le jeu de cartes nommé Tarot, 1783, Etela, pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Allier, claimed that the Book of Thoth, i.e. the Deck of Marseille, yes, the Tarot Marseille Deck, which they called the Book of Thoth at that time in the late 1700s apparently, claimed that the Book of Thoth had been devised by a committee of sages presided over by Hermes Trismegistus himself in the 171st year after the flood.

Athea's book was to be newly edited and reprinted several times and played an important role in encouraging further discourses about Hermes.

And it's interesting how texts that completely fabricate new ideas end up becoming the things that perpetuate the original ideas and texts that they are based on.