Aten
Aten is the sun disk, and under Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, c. 1353-1336 BCE) it became the sole object of royal worship - the first sustained monotheism in the Egyptian record. The Great Hymn to the Aten praises the disk as the source of all life, seen in its rays.
The planetary, elemental, zodiacal, stone, herb and tarot values are modern Western correspondences chosen for coherence with the rest of the corpus, not ancient attributions. Aten is the disk rather than a personified god, which is why the entry carries no gender and no consort.
Correspondences
Offerings
- Offerings
- LightIncenseGoldBread
Sacred timing
- Sacred Timing
Symbols and forms
- Alternate Names
- The Sun DiskThe Disk
- Gender Expression
- Neither
- Titles
- The Living DiskThe Sole God of AmarnaLord of the Rays
- Symbols
- Sun diskRays ending in handsAnkh
Practice
- Invocation Approach
- TonePlain and unmediatedAddressAtenLiving DiskLord of the Two RaysRelationshipThe visible sourceWarning
the Amarna period suppressed the other cults; a working with Aten is deliberately bare. Keep it to light and offering.
ResonanceClarity visibility the unmediated source - Modern Practice
Worked with for clarity and visibility: making a thing seen, cutting out intermediaries, a bare solar practice with light as the offering. It is a deliberately plain current, and the historical warning is part of it - a single source of light also casts one shadow.
Nature and meaning
- Domain
- The sunLightVisibilityThe diskMonotheismThe seen world
- Mythology Summary
Aten is the sun disk, and under Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, c. 1353-1336 BCE) it became the sole object of royal worship - the first sustained monotheism in the Egyptian record. The Great Hymn to the Aten praises the disk as the source of all life, seen in its rays. After Akhenaten's death the cult was dismantled, the capital at Amarna abandoned, and his name erased from monuments.
Details
One of 3,120 entries in the Grimoire — the whole library, every cross-reference, is free to take. Take the whole thing Is it wrong somewhere?
Referenced by 0
Nothing in the library points at this entry yet.
More in Deities
The entries either side of this one in the same catalogue.
All of Deities →New entries, when they land
Occasional notes when a section of the grimoire is added or revised. No account, no tracking across sites, and one line to leave.