The hunger for “Ecstatic Union”. Did it explain Anson Hunter’s search for forbidden mysteries in ancient Egypt’s tombs and temples?

Excerpt from THE SMITING TEXTS... Egypt archaeological mystery and adventure series.

She whispered to him in soothing tones that stroked his growing excitement. “Do you know what it is your heart truly desires, what all humankind desires?” His mind followed her words just as his body had followed her guidance when she’d led him by the hand through the darkness of the tomb. “We are all born with a craving to be bound up in this thing, to surrender our freedom to serve it, to ‘die’ for this greater other. Have you guessed what it is? The hunger for this one thing is the strongest drive of the human spirit. Only one thing can satisfy it.” Sex? he wondered. Or divinity? It had to be one or the other. Why these two poles? Were religion and sex yearnings on the same continuum? Maybe sexual love was sublimated god-hunger, he thought, or was god-love sexual hunger turned heavenward? “The secret craving of your heart is this...” The Egyptian girl paused, giving weight and moment to her next words. “To be bound up in ecstatic union with the divine! Isn’t that your hunger? Isn’t that not the only thing that can fill your aching void, that can bind the pieces of your life together?” To be bound up in ecstatic union. Was that his soul’s longing? He saw a glimpse of light in his mind, not a painted sun, but a real sun. If humankind was made in a creator’s image, did that creator have this same craving to close the separation between himself and his created? Did he want the same thing as us? Union? Had he achieved ecstatic union and intersection with humankind on the cross in the suffering servant of his son who was beaten, killed and finally transmuted? “This hunger for ecstatic union will not be denied,” she whispered in his ear. “Even in death. Frustrated or denied, a longing for unfulfilled spiritual union is a driving force that can even linger on after humans die - as ghosts. Will your longing live on like a ghost after your death? Will your heart be lost in an underworld of dreaming? Or will you seize what your heart was born craving?” He felt the downward heat of her eyes. Her hair swung down in lappets, brushing his face. He felt his heart give a giddy spin. A darkness greater than blindness swarmed inside his head. Was he falling? Or soaring? He spent a time in a rushing, spinning void. He had once read words of an Egyptian underworld spell said: whoever knoweth this chapter may have union with women in the night or by day, and the desire of the woman shall come to him whenever he would enjoy her. He knew the spell and the spell knew him. Suddenly he wanted to follow it through twisting, turning pathways of pleasure, to seek out its fulfilment in an underworld union of journeying and discovery….

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