(R)evolution in Literature: Normandi Ellis 'Imagining the World Into Existence'

Normandi Ellis' magnificent Imagining theis a breakthrough of holistic literature at this crucial time.
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Normandi Ellis' magnificent Imagining the World into Existence: An Ancient Egyptian Manual of Consciousness is a breakthrough of holistic literature at this crucial time.

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Normandi Ellis at the Biblioteca Alexandria in Egypt in June, 2012. Photo by LPS

After re-interpreting the Egyptian Book of the Dead as a primer of life from an awakened feminine consciousness, Ellis now offers a middle passage through the present day tension between opposites by way of a personal/universal embodiment incorporating past and future into the immediacy of the present moment when the world is becoming re-enchanted with...

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...an authentic feminine voice drawing crowds, currently at California Science Center, into an ancient world where Cleopatra VII was fated by custom to share rulership with a divine consort through marriage to her brother and yet...

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...this intriguing beauty willfully conducted an Egyptian modernization of the sacred marriage myth at the birth of civilization with a man of her own choosing ... repeated for our times by Brangelina, with the world's most powerful female ruler of all time to be reinterpreted by the last of the enigmatic movie stars, Angelina Jolie.

Rounding up the embodied mythical experience of her three earlier books -- Dreams of Isis expressing her living through the Isis myth; followed by Awakening Osiris which interprets the death/resurrection of the god in daily living and Feasts of Light celebrating a contemporary connection to the old goddess myths of Egypt -- this volume culminates the Ellis trilogy into a masterpiece of holistic literature bringing an ancient faith into present practice.

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Normandi Ellis anointing at Dendre in Egypt in June, 2012. Photo by Steve Bass.

An antidote for anxiety surrounding the paradigm shift, Ellis' holistic language proclaims a Nietzchian Eternal Return...

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The Egyptian hieroglyph for the Venus cycle from Morning to Evening Star in the shape of a perfect pentagram as viewed from Earth. The Venus Transit across the sun was taking place when this hieroglyph was photographed at Saqqara the oldest temple in Egypt, where rites pertaining to the Eternal Return were practiced. Photo by LPS.

...by way of Egyptian magical practice integrating the human body into the Great Round of life/death/rebirth. Elliis' personal journey embodying the hieroglyphs was an initiation into multidimensional thought in which everything includes its opposite by way of ancient practices reflecting the sacred marriage of heaven and earth...

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What may have been the very first Ouroboros, symbol of cyclical time, on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Photo by LPS.

...into alignment with a 21st century physics that has yet to be fully revealed. The future course of humanity, Ellis writes, depends on our present posture:

The energy field exerted by our thoughts and desires -- and a deeper understanding of how we grow-- can affect our bodies, our environment, and our lives for the better. By our choices, action and states of mind, we alter the rate at which the atoms of our bodies vibrate. This is the underlying principle of personal growth and spiritual unfolding. Nothing is inanimate in the universe. Nothing is static. No energy is every destroyed. It only transmutes, and this mobility makes things better over time. (Normandi Ellis Imagining the World into Existence p. 86

Ellis acquaints us with the mysterious characters of the Egyptian gods, or spirits, via their roles in this night journey from death to the rebirth: Hu (innovation), Sia (wisdom) and Heka (magic). While identifying a conscious destruction of ego via the Osiris/Isis myth as a process of human awakening...

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The many images of Cleopatra, guided by Isis, could have used Ellis' earthly wisdom to escape her peril by way of the serpent.

...the author presents the seed -- a hieroglyph of three images -- as the symbol for the duality facing humanity today: soul evolution through ritual plantings and physical devolution via manufactured seeds and genetically modified foods.

She creates a new language of holism, thereby completing the task that academics -- split from by disciplinary boundaries and linear subject/object orientation of language -- have failed to even identify.

To make conscious the collective unconscious mind means to move that god force energy through a receptive human vessel. This dynamic use of creative energy has a greater effect than simply riding the wave of a natural cycle of fruitfulness and decay. It is commanding the cycle of generation with conscious thought and desire -- as Ptah and Atum did -- to effect spiritual, mental, emotions and physical changes. (Normandi Ellis Imagining the World into Existence p. 70 )

At the crucial impasse faced by humanity today, we all can benefit from Ellis' warning: "Failing to make conscious life changes because we fear the big turnaround leases us down a destructive and disorientating path."

Photos from "Cleopatra: The Exhibition" courtesy of the California Science Center.

Lisa Paul Streitfeld, a cultural critic interpreting 21st century art forms in this series, is a PhD. candidate at European Graduate School.

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