"The Scarabeus sacer, a species of scarab
beetle that is found in North Africa, Europe and some parts of Asia, has been
used in some cultures as a symbol of resurrection, transformation and
protection. This is especially true in Egypt, where symbols were much more than
simple drawings, they were reminders of men's true nature – the spiritual life.
The scarab appeared in
amulets and in the tombs to help the deceased ones in their journey through the
afterlife, symbolizing the transformation that they were about to experience –
when one dies in the physical world, it means the one is born in the spiritual
realm.
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The
Symbolism of the Dung Beetle
The Egyptian tradition
taught that everything that happens in nature is a microcosm of universal
truths, like imprints of the divine reflected in the physical world; therefore,
they used the natural phenomena to understand spiritual phenomena.
Egyptians observed how
newborn scarabs emerge from the dung, and how the adult beetles spend most of
their lives rolling the feces in order to feed their offspring, until
mysteriously, the scarab becomes aware of a pair of wings which had always been
there, and they courageously fly away to explore life outside the dung.
The brief life of the
scarab, then, reveals a beautiful message – just like the scarab beetle lives
among the feces until it discovers its hidden wings. The human soul is also
trapped in the physical world (symbolized by the dung ball) until it discovers
its ability to fly.
Death, for the Egyptians,
symbolized this moment in which the scarab finally abandons the dung ball to be
born in another reality.
The
Sacred Scarab in Ancient Egypt –
God Khepri
The scarab beetle was also
associated to god Khepri, who was regarded as an aspect of the sun god Ra. Sun
gods embody the role of the sun in a solar system; like the sun, which makes
all the flowers in the planet blossom, sun gods make all wisdom emerge among
humans in periods of intellectual darkness (they are considered humans who have
reached the human ideal through many incarnations).
Khepri's head was
sometimes depicted as a dung beetle because Egyptians saw an analogy between
the scarab rolling the dung and the sun god rolling the sun, making it shine on
Earth. However, there is an occult message in this story that cannot be
understood by everyone.
The sun spends half the
day in the underworld, and half the day shining. This movement symbolizes death
(night) and rebirth (every new day), but it is interesting to note that the sun
never really stops shining, since when it is night in one side of the planet,
it is day in the other side.
As Egyptians believed the
soul continued to live after death, only in another realm of existence, the
sun's new rise represented the soul's rebirth in the physical plane after a
period in the spiritual world (symbolized by the night, when the sun shine in
the other side).
So the scarab was placed
in the tomb of the deceased in order to guide them in the afterlife, reminding
them that physical death reveals their true identity – the part of
consciousness that stores all knowledge and continues to be the same even when
it incarnates in different bodies.
Egyptian
Amulets and Talismans
It is clear that the
symbolism of the scarab refers to transformation – the transformation of the
soul from physical to non-physical, from ignorant of its nature to wise.
Egyptian represented the concept of immortality and resurrection (resurrection
of the soul, not the flesh) through the image of the scarab beetle, and
therefore, they created seals, amulets and talismans, which served as tools to
inform those who carried them about these concepts.
It is important to point out that the real
"power" of the talismans and amulets was never the object itself, but
rather, the knowledge it contained. A person who is imbued with the spirit of
immortality and transformation does not fear death. Since fear is one of things
that prevent people from achieving their ideals, those who do not fear are the
ones who make history, so it is the knowledge that protects, the amulets and
talismans are mere instruments through which the knowledge is revealed." - Ward, John. The Sacred Beetle: A Popular
Treatise on Egyptian Scarabs in Art and History.