What is the Kamitic Way of Life?

There is a lot that has been written about the Kamitic way of life because the Kamitic people and their society mean a lot of things to different people. The Kamitic Way of Life to me is based upon my early experiences.

You see, when I first began learning about Kamit, I am not going to lie; I was amazed and just fascinated by all of the metaphysical principles. So much so, that I really tried to apply them to my life. What ended up happening was that I found myself participating in various study groups and attending numerous lectures where I saw the same people all the time. At the same time because my ideas and beliefs were considered so radical from my family and peers, I was somewhat ostracized. Things got a whole lot worse before they got better, but to make a long story short, looking back at all that I experienced I basically was a “metaphysical/spiritual groupie”.

The Aakhut or Right Utchat
(The Solar Eye – corresponds to the factual, logical, and rational information)

For the longest time I couldn’t understand what was going wrong. I mean I read, studied my lessons, and I tried as best I could to eat right, but I just was not growing. I felt spiritually impotent even though my personal library consisted of over 250 books at such a young age. Then that’s when I met my padrino, an old black Cuban man who taught me a lot of wonderful things and helped me to understand our cultural heritage. Papa was an Omo Ellegua (Child of the orisha/guardian angel Ellegua), so it made sense that he magically would appear in my life like Shug Avery appeared to Celie in The Color Purple. There were a lot of things that Papa taught me but when he learned that I was reading and studying about the Kamitic tradition and trying to implement it into my life. Boy he scolded me big time (laugh) and told me that it was silly to try and replicate what was done thousands of years ago, because what the Ancient Egyptians faced back then is completely different from the issues we have today. He told me instead that I should focus upon understanding the concepts and principles because the concepts and principles have a common ancestry. Then shortly after that, like Shug he disappeared only to briefly reappear to check on my progress, similar to the Kamitic Npu, Ellegua guides the dead because I was truly lost.

Npu Statue

At the time I didn’t really understand what Papa meant by what he had said but as the years went by it began to make more and more sense. It was like learning to speak Latin, it is a great language for referencing purposes but no one speaks Latin because it is for the most part a dead-language. Basically, everything that I had read and learned about the Kamitic way was good but it gave me only a one-sided perspective, a real linear, black-white viewpoint (un-holistic). This is why in the Story of Osar, Set is said to have gouged out Hru’s eye, meaning he gave Hru a limited view of things. Well, when I finally began to follow Papa’s advice, I got a better view, a holistic view and that’s when my ancestors introduced to me the maa aankh.

The Aabit or Left Utchat
(The Lunar Eye – corresponds to abstract ideas, faith, intuition, ancestors, etc.)

There are a lot of lessons that my ancestors revealed to me through the maa aankh. One of the most important lessons was that we are made in the image of God and are a microcosm of a greater Macrocosm, (unfortunately there aren’t words in the English language to properly explain it the closest understanding is that); we are made in the image of the Universe. This means that just like God has a Soul we have a Soul and just like God has a Spirit, we have a Spirit. Since the Spirit is energy/matter there exists an unseen or un-manifested aspect of the Spirit and a seen or physical manifestation of the Spirit, which is commonly called spiritual and physical realm. It is sometimes symbolized as the ethereal sky and the solid earth. The early Kamitians symbolized this as the dark lands of the south, which they called KAMTA (Upper Kamit) and the red lands of the north TASETT (Lower Kamit). In the human being KAMTA symbolizes our higher divisions of the Spirit and TASETT the lower divisions especially the human body, carnal man/woman, or the flesh.

God and man/woman’s Soul is symbolized as the Sun and just like the Sun metaphorically speaking is born (Khepera), lives (Ra), dies (Ra Atum) and reborn (Amun Ra). The same occurs for our Soul or Sun. But when we experience disease, tragedy, loss, setbacks, obstacles and even death (called soul-loss in many shamanic traditions). It is sometimes becomes a little hard for us to be reborn and recover from that experience because our Soul/Sun is stuck in TASETT. This is the reason why I felt spiritually impotent and like I wasn’t going anywhere. It also explains the reason why my life kept spiraling northward (pun on the Kamitic concept of hell). It was because I was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death (Psalms 23), this is the reason why the early Kamitic sages called the arid, desert dry lands TASETT, the Red Lands. Like most deserts it is full of allusions but there is little to no life. The only life that dwells in the desert is those species that have learned how to dominate and subdue other life forms. (Note Ra Atum symbolizes the moment of death, hence the Shadow of Death).

Life changed when I like the heroic Hru (from the Story of Osar) put down the books (things of the earth – physical things) and began to rely upon faith (“things” that cannot be physically seen e.g. ancestors, trance, divination, etc.) to guide me through the other side, so that my Sun could be reborn.

It was from this experience I concluded that every time we are put into a difficult situation, it is time for us to learn how to improve our life. This is because what doesn’t kill us in TASETT does make us stronger and more resilient to the point that we can handle anything. But in order for us survive the experience and make it out of the desert. We have to understand that this is the purpose of life.

Now, I am not saying or advocating like some, to go look for some challenging experience to get into, but to understand that the cycle of life is an initiating system in itself. This is what the early Kamitic sages knew and built their culture upon. It was the same concepts and principles that made it possible for early African Americans to survive slavery by syncretizing these spiritual beliefs into the Afro-American religious experience, that survive to this day.

We were all initiated into the cycle of life the day we were born and we will continue to have experiences pushing us to become stronger and wiser Suns, until we physically die. That’s why we are all here to perfect our being. We are all here learning how to deal with each other both ally and foe alike. We all here learning how to overcome obstacles, tragedies and to depend not on what we read, see on tv, hear from our friends, etc. but on depending upon God. Because the day is going to come when we will not have any physical thing (money, books, physical resources, etc.) and we have to make a miracle appear out of nowhere. It is a scary thought but who else can you depend upon when you every thing seems to fail? That’s right…you have to learn to go deep within and stir that divine power down south to manifest that physical blessing.

So the Kamitic way of life to me is all about evolving and becoming a stronger, wiser and more powerful Sun. It is truly about becoming a great individual like Moses, Jesus Christ or what the Kamitic people called Osar, enlightened Ancestor. The stronger, wiser and more powerful we become, the more peace and prosperity we will have because every experience we have as we travel across the deserted lands of TASETT, will eventually lead to our resurrection, rebirth or our Sun/Soul being miraculous reborn.

Excerpt from MAA AAANKH: Finding God the Afro-American Spiritual Way,
by Honoring the Ancestors and Guardian Spirits by Derric Moore. Order directly at 1 SoL Alliance