Open Veils · Answer
Tell me more about the neter
The neter is not a 'god' in the Abrahamic sense but a cosmic principle — a force, frequency or intelligence woven into the fabric of reality itself. John Anthony West and R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz argued that the neteru represent archetypal metaphysical forces, not mythological personalities. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval extended this, treating the neteru as encoded cosmological knowledge embedded in temple architecture and stellar alignments. The hieroglyph itself — an axe or staff wrapped in cloth — signals dynamic, cutting, generative power, not mere personhood.
Evidence
- R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, in his monumental study of Luxor temple, argued that Egyptian 'gods' were functional principles of a sacred science — each neter a specific cosmic intelligence governing a domain of natural law.
- Manly P. Hall, in his encyclopaedic survey of secret teachings, noted that the Egyptian priesthood distinguished between the populace's literal reading of the gods and an initiatory understanding in which the neteru were aspects of a single uncreated intelligence — what the Hermetic tradition later called the All.
- Matthew LaCroix has drawn attention to the Ogdoad of Hermopolis — eight primordial neteru representing pre-creation forces: darkness, water, air and invisibility, each in male-female pairs — arguing these encode a sophisticated cosmogony describing conditions before material universe formation.
- The archaeo-acoustics research community has recently characterised the neter as 'a unified field theory' rather than a pantheon — a living matrix from which the specific neteru (Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Ra, Horus) each emerge as differentiated expressions.
- John Anthony West, who spent decades popularising Schwaller's work, described the neteru as the Egyptian equivalent of Platonic archetypes: not beings to be worshipped but forces to be understood and aligned with.