This book presents Hoffman’s Egyptian Mystery School initiation. A complete program is offered here, but Holy Cagliostro, Batman! To get to the first step of the journey, you have to get past Hoffman and her cronies yelling “baksheesh! baksheesh!” as they pimp their books and CDs through the preface and introduction.
People who claim to have channeled wisdom from Ancient Egypt make my stomach clench. “Ancient Egyptian wisdom” has been a code phrase for “stand and deliver” used by charlatans since Pontius was a pilot. People are fascinated with ancient things and with things from Egypt, so labeling anything as “ancient Egyptian” is a sure sell.
Okay, I’ll get off my highly-skeptical soapbox. Once Hoffman knocks off her fairground barker shtick, each level of initiation is integrated with an Egyptian temple that is “a living conscious soul of a physical Egyptian sacred site.” Hoffman is the “conduit and scribe.” She is certified an energy medicine technique called Alchemical Healing and received her transmission into a “lineage of Thoth” during her visits to Egypt. Her channeled wisdom leads the student through an ascension spiral through thirteen Temples of Light. These were “built on a leyline, which is a portal, or vortex, with direct access to information and wisdom.”
Through this journey, the initiate enters into “higher states of awareness and enlightenment, awakening innate abilities such as healing, renewal, raising consciousness, and magic.” Of course there are the obligatory references to the Age of Aquarius and stomach-curdling astrological and astronomical assertions parroting José Argüelles that are just plain wrong. It’s this very sort of woomongery that makes New Age books seem less than authentic.
Written, physical and spoken exercises are recommended for each step. The steps in Part I help the initiate gain empowerment, abundance, unity, amplified consciousness and receptivity, cosmic oneness, divine love, and neutral energy for peace. Part II leads to the Inner Temple, where the initiate will gain instinctual bliss, soul evolution, inner resonance, contact with the divine mind, star consciousness and rhythmic peace.
The language in this book is typical of many New Age personal evolution books, but it’s dressed up in the mysticism and deities of Egypt. To give her credit, Hoffman’s initiation path is more imaginative that most. Her voice drips with sincerity on the CD (which has an introduction and two guided meditations; the full set of recordings are a separate purchase). The texts to the guided meditations are printed in the book, too, but it’s helpful to be able to close your eyes and listen, and the background music is lovely. Other groovy features are the images of Egyptian art scattered through the text and a dozen pages of full color photographs of the temple sites. The layout and formatting are excellent, and the organization of the material was well-planned and executed. The typefaces are clear and easy to read. From a production standpoint, this is a very handsome book.
This book is recommended for seekers who find the Egyptian idiom an attractive feature and who are willing to invest the time and energy to go through Hoffman’s program. The exercises and meditations in this book could be very helpful for a person who wants to work toward deeper self knowledge, harness personal potential, and create a better attitude for making it happen. There’s no magic bullet here, or in books like this – it’s up to the reader who gets out of it what they put into it.
~review by Elizabeth Hazel
Book by Danielle Rama Hoffman
Bear & Company, 2009, with CD.
220 pp. $20.00.
