Anubis: Lessons on How To Live From the Guardian of The Dead

Like all the best sto­ries, the Egyptian myth of Anubis begins in a tan­gle of love and deceit.

Anubis was born to Osiris and Nephthys. Now Nephthys is the wife of Set, who just hap­pens to be Osiris’s broth­er and rival. Disguised as her sis­ter Isis, Nephthys con­ceives Anubis with Osiris in secret and Anubis is born into the in-between of loy­al­ty and betrayal.

Fearing Set’s wrath, Nephthys hides the infant in the desert, where he is lat­er found and raised by Isis, the great moth­er-magi­cian of compassion.

Set even­tu­al­ly learns of the decep­tion and dis­mem­bers Osiris, scat­ter­ing his body parts across the scorched and bar­ren land. But a now-grown Anubis and Isis gath­er the pieces, care­ful­ly wrap­ping and pre­serv­ing Osiris’s body so that he may pass into the afterlife.

Through his will­ing­ness to tend to what was bro­ken, Anubis becomes the guardian of the dead. Often depict­ed with the head of a jack­al, Anubis is linked to the wild dogs that roamed desert ceme­ter­ies, fer­al crea­tures who lived at the bound­ary between the liv­ing and the dead. Anubis becomes their sacred coun­ter­part, a pro­tec­tor of graves, a watch­er of thresh­olds, ulti­mate­ly over­see­ing The Hall of Judgement cer­e­mo­ny. This rit­u­al weighs the heart of the deceased against a feath­er. The feath­er belongs to Ma’at, the prin­ci­ple of bal­ance, of cos­mic har­mo­ny. If one’s heart was heavy due to immoral­i­ty or self­ish­ness, the scales won’t bal­ance, and the Afterlife is denied.

It’s the truth and ten­der­ness of your heart that is ulti­mate­ly mea­sured. Not your achieve­ments or finan­cial suc­cess. Not the sto­ry you’ve curat­ed for others.

This can leave one feel­ing despon­dent. Won’t all true souls trem­ble at the scales, full of doubt and regrets?

I wor­ried too much.

I failed people.

I doubt­ed myself.

But Anubis under­stands mor­tals in the same way he under­stands mor­tal­i­ty. He’s a Big Picture kin­da guy, over­look­ing small specifics toward a deep­er under­stand­ing of a life well-lived. He reminds us that good liv­ing is a devo­tion of atten­tion. The heart grows heavy not from fail­ing, but from for­get­ting to live while alive.

Do you notice the morn­ing when it arrives?

Do you soft­en more than you harden?

Do you offer even small kind­ness­es when it’s eas­i­er not to?

Do you return, over and over, to awe?

The scales set­tle by sin­cer­i­ty, not per­fec­tion. By a qui­et, repeat­ed choos­ing of life. The soul may then enter Aaru, a lush, fer­tile realm of flow­ing waters and abun­dant crops, where souls are reunit­ed with loved ones. Until then, we needn’t live per­fect­ly. We bal­ance the cos­mic scales when we remem­ber to live at all.