Further comments on the Stele of Jeu.

I have commented several times in this blog on the “Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphicist,” also known as the “Rite of the Headless Daimon,” in the PGM. It is, as I've stated before, the backbone ritual behind both Crowley's Bornless One Ritual and Liber Samekh.

In the past I have insisted that the entity conjured by the ritual is the Agathos Daimon, based on the way the ritual ends: “My Name is a Heart Encircled by a Serpent: Come Forth and Follow.” This line is highly important, but not for the reasons I assumed (such as the explicit imagery of the serpent and the heart).

As it turns out, the Headless Daimon could actually refer to a number of things, some of which I will get into with this entry.

• In the first place, it may be a reference to the Sternophthalmoi, or Blemmyes*.
  Amongst the ways of referencing them was to refer to them as “Akephalos” - “without (a) Head”.**
• The term Akephalos is also used and applied to certain strains of Egyptian Magic, as it turns out.
  I had no idea because I am rarely interested in “Egyptian” magick as it's put forward by Neo-Pagans and Ceremonial Magicians. Nonetheless, not realizing this aspect has been a problem.

I shall now quote John Coleman Darnell's “The Enigmatic Netherworld Books of the Solar Oriris Unity.” The reason for quoting it will become quite clear in a moment:

“He is the Headless Body, the mummy without a face;

he is the color changing bull, the commander commanding eternal silence,

the tkm of every day, the great silence.”

“This is the mighty eastern giant, his Orisiran part as Akephalos, his solar part as the Buchis bull, the tkm-form of the sun at the horizon. But there was also a desire that the head be knitted to the body in the Netherworld. In the final text to the Sixth Division of the Book of Caverns, Khepri is termed ts-tp, “attached of head.” Akephalos was not powerful without his head, but because of what his headlessness implied – his head was with the sun (italix mine), and was the sun.

The heads before headless mummies on the Second Shrine of Tutankhamun are connected by light to disks atop the back of the serpent. This representation recalls Amduat and the Book of Gates scenes of disks and heads atop the back of Apep, emerging from the coils of the serpent. The heads emerge and rise up to rejoin the headless corpse...” (P. 116-117)

In the footnotes to page 116, he further explains:

“The light of the deity and the voice of the deity are equated, and this for the headless Akephalos, the headlessness merely heightening the emphasis on the portentiously unseen solar head.”

Now, in the past, I have shown enormous hostility to those who suggest that the “Rite of the Headless Daimon” is just an exorcism, as the enormous amount of information within the ritual itself suggests otherwise. Yes, it is clearly an exorcism and that is the primary function of the ritual. However, there is something else going on, and making this clear has made me a tad annoyed at times. Especially when dealing with individuals who have never done the ritual and then claim that Crowley's version serves a purpose the original does not. This is completely incorrect, and will always be incorrect. The rituals serve the same function.

That said, my insistence that the spirit was the Agathos Daimon? I now must admit that it appears I was wrong. I also need to dive into the PGM and go over rituals involving executed criminals and their ghosts (as some of them ended up “headless” and were manipulated afterward), to see what else I'm missing. Nonetheless, I felt that I needed to post this entry and redact my past stupidity. As it turns out, I'm still a clueless fool.

* There is also some interesting research to be done into why the Nubian tribes were referred to as such on my part, as I think it may actually link together in the end. But, I could be wrong.

** The word "akephalos" is precisely the only association Headless Monsters bear to the ritual. My sense of humor is odd, sorry. Pay attention to the word and concept, not the monsters.