Scarab

Why is the scarab associated with the soul or with the immortality of the soul?  Because in the beginning, when we as souls enter into this planetary body, we are associated with the mechanical laws of Nature; our soul is associated with what we call the Tritocosmos, “very tiny cosmos,” in which the soul can develop. When we talk about the Tritocosmos, most of the time we associate it with Hell, with the Infernos, with the inferior dimensions of Nature.  But that tiny cosmos in another aspect is related with insects.  Thus, when we study the Tritocosmos, we associate it with Hell or with insects.  Now, we realize why in ancient times many religions associated certain insects with the soul: the soul that is entangled in the mechanicity of Nature and that eventually should leave that mechanicity in order to enter into the superior worlds, in order – we will say – to become a Microcosmos, a Human Being, who will be able to enter into the superior cosmos.  But before performing that metamorphosis, we are submitted to the mechanicity of the Tritocosmos, which is below, or behind the Mesocomos (the planet Earth). Unfortunately, from birth to seven years of age, that scarab, that embryo of soul, develops his personality. This word personality comes from Latin personae, which means “mask.”  Or we will say “a shield” like the scarab needs in order to protect the consciousness; with it he protects himself, the soul, against the exterior world, which is society, this materialistic world in which we live. There is an insect called cicada, which in summer emits a chirping sound continuously; not like a cricket, but more fine, more sharp. There is this belief among people that when this insect finishes its chirping, is because it exploded, and dies.  But this is not true.  What happens is that because of this sound, this vibration, the insect is creating a new body within that body, and the chirping sound is the open of the back of that insect, until it is completely opened and a new body emerges from that carcass.  It is similar to that process of the snake.  So that insect is immortal.  When people find the old carcass, they say, “Oh, it died.  It exploded.”  But they don’t know that a new body emerged from that and just left there the carcass, the skin.  This is precisely the reason why – because of the activity of this cicada – the ancient Egyptians used the scarab in order to symbolize the soul.  In other words, when the soul leaves the old body it creates a new one and it starts doing the same activity, the same chirping again. Thus according to the chirp, we build a new body, again and again and again.