THE SEVEN COSMIC ADMINISTRATORS
The answer is provided by the Hermetic texts, which were composed in Egypt around the same time as the Edfu Temple Texts, presumably from secret knowledge contained in the scrolls uncovered by the Ptolemies.
These Hermetic texts, which claim to present the older philosophic spirit of Egypt, outline a secret doctrine concerning seven cosmic administrators—cosmic beings who dwell in seven cosmic spheres and whose collective working is called destiny: “The first Mind... the Mind which is Life and Light... gave birth to another Mind, a Maker of things; and this second Mind made seven Administrators, who encompass in their spheres the [entire] world perceived by sense; and their administration is called Destiny.”5
Whereas the “first Mind” represents the field of pure consciousness, which serves as the immortal form of the Supreme Being, the second Mind, a “Maker of things,” represents the unborn Creator identified with the seven cosmic shells or seers. In the Hermetic texts, the seven seers are called the seven administrators, and their working is called destiny. The texts then go on to reveal a secret about the administrators—a secret kept hidden until this day. It pertained to the first period of human existence on Earth, referred to by the ancient Egyptians as zep tepi:
Nature mingled in marriage with Man, brought forth a marvel most marvelous. Inasmuch as Man had got from the structure of the heavens the character of the seven Administrators... Nature tarried not, but forthwith gave birth to seven Men, according to the characters of the seven Administrators... and the Man in them changed from Life and Light into soul and mind, soul from Life and mind from Light. And all things remained so until the end of a period.6
This highly suggestive passage seems to refer to a secret Egyptian doctrine of divine incarnation.
According to the Hermetic texts, the seven cosmic administrators, identified with the seven cosmic shells, incarnated on the earth as seven men during zep tepi. This amounts to a sevenfold incarnation of the unborn Creator in the form of seven godlike men or seven enlightened sages whose souls reflected the character of the seven cosmic administrators.A similar doctrine can be found in the Vedic tradition. According to the Puranas, during the first period, satya yuga (the age of truth), the seven cosmic seers—that is, the embodiments of the seven cosmic shells—incarnated on the earth as seven men who were known as the seven seers. These original seers became eventually the patriarchs of the seven families of Vedic seers, which in turn became the elite families of seer-priests and seer-kings that ruled the historical Vedic culture.
The Hebrew sages told a similar story: They placed in the Garden of Eden seven elohim, or lords, who embodied collectively the presence of Jehovah (the unborn Creator) on Earth. It was these seven lords whom Adam and Eve served while in the Garden, and it was they who banished Adam and Eve from the Garden “lest they become like one of us.”
The Sumerians told a similar story of seven anunnaki, or sons of heaven, who descended from heaven prior to the advent of the first historical dynasties and instituted kingship on Earth.
Therefore, virtually all of the earliest cultures and civilizations told a similar story: a tale of seven divine men, the incarnations of the seven cosmic seers, who manifested collectively the presence of God on earth at the dawn of human history. Were the ancients caught up in a collective delusion that spanned millennia and continents, or were they recalling a historical event that initiated the dawn of human culture on Earth? Unfortunately, the historical facts have been lost in the sands of time. All that remains is myth and innuendo, but the implications are tantalizing.