Scarabs:

"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.