Let's Start Downstairs in the Afterlife

If you're ever in San Jose, California, check out the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium.

My friend and I had gone down to see another friend in a stage production of Clockwork Orange where Alex and the gang are women. Total horrorshow! Who wouldn't want to see that! But we got our times mixed up and ended up getting to the theater about seven hours early. Fortunately, the Rosicrucian Museum was just across the street and rather than lament the missed play, we decided to enjoy the museum.

The museum has replicas of all sorts of ancient artifacts from statues of Bast, to perfume jars, to a full scale Rosetta stone*. It even has a passageway built like a tomb. And for a small museum, the bookstore was great. There was a Bast statue that would look fetching on the Altar of Strife, a large selection of Egyptian themed refrigerator magnets, and an extensive collection of books written by members of the Rosicrucian order such as "Rosicrucian Principles for Home and Business," by H. Spencer Lewis and "Great Women Initiates, or the Feminine Mysteries," by Helene Bernard.

And did you know that rich Egyptians used to insure they'd get out of working in the afterlife by placing “shabtis” or “Answerers” in their tombs. This figures were expected to volunteer for duty if any gods came recruiting for hard labor. I want my own answerer.

*(One of the heartwarming moments of the day was when a young girl of about eight or nine stopped dead in her tracks upon spying this. Her jaw dropped and she whispered, “The Rosetta Stone.” That's what we need to be teaching our children, not how to get out of doing anything useful in the next life.)