So Supernatural - MYSTICAL: The Book of Thoth

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

For the ancient Egyptians, magic wasn't a mysterious force – it was part of everyday life. But some of the most powerful rituals and spells were said to be preserved in The Book of Thoth, written by the god of magic himself. According to legend, the book contained everything from how to speak with animals to how to come back from the dead. But its existence remains a mystery to this day. To read a variety of translations of the Emerald Tablet, please visit this link.To read Hermes Trimegistus’s Hermitica, please visit this link. For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/mystical-the-book-of-thoth So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

There's one thing I think about a lot. It's a question I was asked once during some party game. If you had a time machine and you could take it to any point in the past, where would you go? Now, I'm not sure if my answer will surprise you or not, but I kind of think it's ancient Egypt. Maybe it's the ahead-of-their-time innovations. I would love to finally see how those pyramids were built once and for all. Or it might even be the incredible outfits those ancient pharaohs wore. I would love nothing more to bring home a piece for my own wardrobe.

But there's one thing about Egypt that intrigues me above all the rest. Because it seems like a time period where magic and the supernatural really did exist out in the open without question. Apparently, the ancient Egyptians had many of these magical secrets written down in text. It's called the Book of Thoth. Supposedly, it's written by the God of Knowledge and Reckoning, Thoth himself.

Ancient documents say it talks about everything from the underworld to how we speak with animals to prophecies about the end of the world. Problem is, while scientists think they've done a pretty good job of reconstructing what's in there, no one's found the book itself. At least, not yet. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural. Welcome back to So Supernatural. I'm Rasha Pecorero. And I'm Yvette Gentili. And today we're talking about one of the most mysterious and important books you've

probably never heard of. The Book of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian text filled with spells and incantations. For thousands of years, people have searched for it, but to this day, its location remains a mystery. This sacred book was allegedly written by an actual god and hidden away where almost no one could reach it. It was said to hold secrets so powerful they could change the world.

Or destroy whoever tried to wield them. So Yvette, if you had magic, like real magic, what is the first thing you would use it for? I think you know that the first thing would be to bring Mama Fana back to life. And the second thing, peace on earth, you know, for people to treat each other with kindness and respect and dignity. Well, you said that exactly like Fana Hodel would have. Fana Hodel's daughter has to say peace on earth, of course. And of course, I would want to bring mom back from the dead, too. But here's the thing, though. For most of us, magic is this giant what if, right? What if we could levitate or read minds or bring someone back

from the dead? But the ancient Egyptians didn't ask what if. To them, magic was a very, very real part of everyday life. For context, when we talk about ancient Egypt, we're talking about a civilization that lasted more than 3,000 years, from the first dynasty around 3100 BCE up until the death of the famous Cleopatra in 30 BCE. Y'all, that's a crazy long time. Hard to fathom, right? But another remarkable thing was how consistent their religion was. They kept the same basic pantheon

of gods for thousands of years. And one of the most important gods of all was Thoth. He is usually depicted as a guy with the head of a baboon or an ibis, which is a bird with a long curved beak. Thoth was the god of wisdom, writing, knowledge, and magic. In Egyptian mythology, he performed the calculations to help create the earth. So naturally, the Egyptians turned to him to make sense of what was around them. See, from their perspective, the world was full of invisible beings. Both gods and spirits used magic to inhabit objects, animals, and even people. They could cause disease, make mischief, or even communicate with humans if they chose. And the only way to control these things was with, well, what else?

More magic. For at least 3,000 years, much of the ancient Egyptian's religion revolved around magic. Everyone from peasants to pharaohs used it to some extent. Whether it was wearing amulets or buying love potions, anyone could get a taste of it. And the more important you were, the more access you had to higher-level magic. But the bigger stuff like healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, or even bringing the dead back to life, well that was reserved for priests. They were the only ones who could perform sacred ceremonies.

They were also the only ones allowed to write using hieroglyphics, which was considered to be the language of the gods. The priests kept these secrets close, scared of what might happen if their knowledge fell into the wrong hands. But even so, mistakes did happen. And there's a story from about 1200 BCE that shows just how dangerous those mistakes could be. It comes from an official court document, basically a trial transcript for people charged with trying to overthrow King Ramses III.

This story had the usual kind of palace intrigue you might expect. A bunch of high officials didn't like how Ramses was running things, so they met in secret and planned ways to kill him so that they could put someone else in charge. But one of the plotters, a guy named Hui, thought that words and weapons wouldn't be enough, so he broke into the king's library and grabbed a book of magic spells. Supposedly it gave Hui god-like powers, which he used to wreak havoc on the royal family. He even manipulated the king's allies into doing his bidding, and several people were struck with bouts of madness and paralysis after the fact. But before he could pull off the coup, Ramsay figured out what Wee was up to.

He was caught and sentenced to death. As powerful as that book was, We was still only human. Even for people who were genuinely amazing at magic, there were still limits to the power they could attain. But there's another story from way after the failed coup, about 900 years later, that definitely calls those limits into question. At the time, King Necta Nabo was a great pharaoh who ruled over territory from modern-day Sudan to Israel. He was also a total brainiac.

He read every book he could get his hands on, especially the ones about magic. And supposedly the gods, especially Thoth, helped him learn it. This made him an expert at reading fortunes and seeing the future, but he could do a lot more than that. Every time someone sent an army after him, he'd use sorcery to call up these subterranean demons to wipe out his enemies. He also made little wax figures of his enemy ships and dropped them into a bowl of water. When he spoke the magic words, the real ship supposedly sank to the bottom of the ocean. But Necta Nabo was still human. And his magic was nothing compared to the magic the gods possessed.

When they decided he'd gotten a little too full of himself, they started helping his enemies. But remember, Necta Nabo could see the future, and he realized he was done for. So he found a disguise and fled the royal palace. Basically if you knew enough magic, you could do whatever you wanted. Unless the gods decided otherwise. See, they operated on a whole other level from humans. And at the center of it all was Thoth, the god of magic. A statue of Thoth or a book of his spells could hold a tiny piece of his knowledge,

but it was like a droplet of water next to the sea. of his knowledge, but it was like a droplet of water next to the sea. But there were legends that somewhere, somehow, Thoth had decided to put the entire ocean of his knowledge into one safe place. Since he was the god of writing, the ancient Egyptians believed it was a book, the Book of Thoth. If the book that Nectanebo used to sink fleets was a taste of Thoth's magic, then this was the whole meal. And while we know it was a really long time ago, we have reason to believe it really did exist, because apparently a few humans may have actually seen it. See, archaeologists found inscriptions on one of the pyramids in Giza from 3300 BCE.

It said that King Onas, the guy the pyramid was built for, was buried with a mystical book. And some researchers believed it to be the Book of Thoth. Then a couple thousand years later, a reference to the book popped up again on a papyrus scroll found in Thebes. That's about 400 miles south of Cairo. The scroll tells a story about this Egyptian prince named Neferkaptah. Now this guy had one big obsession.

Reading ancient text. While everyone else was out partying, he was spending all day studying inscriptions in temples. That's where he was one afternoon when this priest showed up and started laughing at him. The priest basically told Nefer Kaptah, look, you're wasting your time on those boring old texts. If you really want to read something worthwhile, I know where the Book of Thoth is." He explained to Nefer Kaptah that this book was so powerful it could enchant the sky,

the earth, even the sea. You would understand the language of animals, and if you're dead, you could use it to come back to life. Nefer Kaptah was all in. He was like, okay, tell me where it is and I'll give you whatever you want. And the priest was no fool. He asked for a ton of cash and a proper burial with the works when the time came. Once Nefer Kaptah agreed, the priest spilled the tea. He said the Book of Thoth was hidden at the bottom of the Nile River in these crazy series of boxes, iron, bronze, wood, ivory, silver, and gold.

And get this, it was guarded by snakes, scorpions, and this immortal serpent that couldn't be killed. But Nefer Capta was like, no big deal, I've got this. So he set off with his wife Ahura and their young son Merab, even though Ahura begged him not to make them all go. She had a bad feeling about this whole thing. We don't know if the book had a reputation by that point, but she seemed to think the book was cursed. And spoiler alert, it totally was. But Nefer Kaptah ignored his wife, which we know is always a bad move, and he dragged his family to a city called Kaptos just a few miles from Thebes. When he got there,

he used the magic he learned in his studies to find the box deep within the Nile River. And after a few days of casting spells, he finally faced the immortal snake. But, how do you kill something that can't die, right? Well in one genius move, he sliced the snake in half and before it could reassemble, he shoved sand between the pieces so they couldn't reconnect. Boom, Problem solved. Once the snake was gone, he opened all the nested boxes one by one until he finally got to the Book of Thoth. He supposedly soaked it in beer and drank the ink. And immediately after, he was fully enlightened. He could understand the language of birds and fish, even the gods

themselves. But here's where it all went south. It seems that Thoth realized his book was stolen and went straight to Ra, the son of God, to demand justice. And Ra was like, fine, I'll take him down. So Ra pulled Neferkaptah's son, Mirhab, into the Nile and drowned him. But even with all his magical knowledge,

Neferkaptah couldn't save him. And after the funeral, the sun god, Ra, drew Aruha into the water and drowned her too. By that point, Neferkaptah knew his time was up, so he tied the book to his chest with royal linen and let the Nile take him as well. Even in death, though, his magic was so strong that his body floated hundreds of miles to the city of Memphis, Egypt. There he was buried with full honors, along with the Book of Thoth.

Apparently no one tried to take the book from him. Because remember, the book is cursed. It isn't until years later that someone finally got the nerve to try and take it. Another young hothead by the name of Prince Setna. It's said that Setna found Neferkaptah's tomb. Now we aren't sure if the tomb was hidden or he just broke in, but the Book of Thoth was there. Setna tried to take it, but apparently the ghost of Neferkaptah offered him an opportunity to win the book in a board game. It's a long story so we'll spare you all the details,

but basically what you need to know is that Setna used magic to win the game and earn the book. But that cursed text eventually caught up with him. So not long after that, Setna had a dream where he fell in love with the daughter of a priest. She conned him into giving her all his possessions and then killed all of his children, which was probably terrifying for him because the ancient Egyptians put a lot of weight on dreams. They believe that's how the gods communicated to them.

Which must have been pretty scary, because Setna woke up that morning and ran right back to Nefer Kaptah's tomb to return the book, exactly where he found it. Now if Setna really was the last person to see the Book of Thoth, you'd think that would be the end of the story, right? I mean sure, it's all really fascinating folklore, but for all we know, it could be totally made up. Here's the thing though, references to the book pop up again and again throughout history. And that's what makes people wonder.

Maybe it wasn't just a legend. Maybe the stories are true, and the book really did exist. In fact, there's evidence someone else may have gotten their hands on it, a mysterious scholar who claimed to have cracked the code of the universe. And he planned to use this knowledge to change the entire world. For centuries, people have questioned the existence of the mystical Book of Thoth. It's a comprehensive text of spells and incantations supposedly written by Thoth, the god of wisdom, knowledge and magic himself.

But after Prince Sutton reportedly returned the book to the tomb of Neferkapta, it seemed to disappear from history. Many wondered if it remained buried with the king, or if someone else had unearthed it for a glimpse. Well, from what we found, it seems there's evidence the book was passed around even after the story of Setna, because there's another text out there that claims to be inspired by the original Book of Thoth, in a way. In fact, its author, a legendary philosopher, was rumored

to be a reincarnated version of Thoth himself. His name was Hermes Trismegistus. Now, history hasn't left us a whole lot about this guy, not even where he's from or when he lived. Some tales say that he helped create civilization itself. However, many of his followers believed he lived around the same time as Moses and Prince Etna, around the 13th century BCE. We don't even know what his real name was. The name we're using was one that was given to him by the Greeks at least a thousand years after he died. His whole persona is a mystery. All we know for sure about him are the writings that he left behind.

There are some rumors though. Like supposedly Hermes wasn't just an enlightened thinker, he was an outright mystical powerhouse. People say his purpose was to help humanity recognize our own divinity, except he thought man could find salvation through knowledge instead of faith. So it kind of makes sense why many people thought he was the reincarnation of the magical god Thoth. That's why some people also called his writings the Book of Thoth, because they might be one in the same. Assuming they are the same book, we can learn a lot about what was in the original by reading his version, which is also frequently called the Hermetica.

You can read these texts for yourself, by the way. They're available online and we'll drop a link to them in our blog post for this episode. The Hermetica is fascinating because it's essentially two books in one. One part is philosophical with big ideas about who we are as humans. It says that we're divine souls trapped in mortal bodies, souls that aren't defined by ethnicity, gender, or other earthly categories. The second half of the Hermetica is much more technical. This is where we get into the nitty-gritty of magic, alchemy, and even potion-making, basically blending the mystical with the practical.

And the reason people think there's a connection with the Book of Thoth is because some of these spells sound like they came directly from Thoth's magic. For example, Hermes describes how to capture evil spirits and see the future, just like King Nectonebo. But the really juicy stuff from the Book of Thoth, like how to live forever, was left out. Maybe that was deliberate because Hermes didn't want to give people too much power, although some believe he put those secrets in a different book altogether.

A book that was discovered in the first century CE by a young Greek man named Balanus. Supposedly Balanus was obsessed with philosophy even as a kid. He bugged his parents non-stop with questions about things like the meaning of life. So you know, totally casual. The kid was destined to be a great philosopher and his parents seemed to believe that too. So when he was 14, they sent him to study with a legendary teacher in a city called Tarsus, in modern day Turkey. While Balinus was there, he was trekking through a deep, dark cave when he discovered this mysterious tomb.

And in that tomb was an emerald tablet with ancient letters carved into it. The stone allegedly shared the secret to turning lead into gold, as well as the formula for divine power. The tablet was signed by Hermes Trismegistus, which meant it had to be another piece of the Hermetica, also known as his Book of Thoth. When Balinus read the tablet, it was like something had unlocked inside of him. He left his teacher and traveled the world, spreading messages from Thoth about magic and enlightenment.

It seems Balanus may have entrusted the tablet itself to some of his disciples after he died. But 350 years later, when religious zealots were destroying everything that they considered pagan, they buried the tablet in an undisclosed location. After that, it becomes a mystery. That is until sometime in the ninth century CE, when Arabic writers transcribed everything Balinese supposedly learned from that tablet into ancient text.

It was called the Emerald Tablet, and basically, it's 14 super cryptic sentences describing how the universe works. Again, you can read it for yourself online, and we'll link to them in our blog post for this episode, so check it out. It's not exactly the giant magical spellbook we've all been picturing. And while anyone can read it, I wonder if there's more to it. Like maybe unless you're trained, spiritually enlightened,

or have the right interpretation, the magic stays hidden. Well, a lot of people tried to unlock its secrets and some of their efforts changed the course of history. Latin translations of the Emerald Tablet and the Hermetica became insanely popular, so much so that Hermes Trismegistus was much studied in the Italian Renaissance. Revolutionary scientists like Copernicus may have even been influenced by the Book of Thoth. Same went for Isaac Newton. He didn't just study gravity, he was obsessed with magic,

and even wrote his own translation for the Emerald Tablet. In other words, even though no one had seen the original Book of Thoth for thousands of years, it was still making waves. And we have Hermes Trismegistus to thank for that. But there's a slight problem when it comes to Hermes Trismegistus. For starters, we don't even know if he was a real person. And even if he did exist, it's possible that many of the works credited to him were written by multiple authors over a long period of time. Many scholars believe the Hermetica was actually a mashup of Egyptian,

Greek, and later Roman ideas. If that's true, there could be a connection to the Book of Thoth, but the original message may have been garbled over time. Also worth mentioning, the emerald tablet Balenus found didn't appear in any records at all until the 8th or 9th century. That's way after the fact. Which makes it really hard to trust what's inside. We have the same problem when it comes to the story of Neferkaptah, the king who supposedly found the book in the Nile before losing his wife and son. Even if it was inspired by true events, the actual narrative was written down about a thousand years after the event supposedly

took place. That's a really, really long time. That's pretty wild, and it really drives home just how old these stories are and how much we've lost over the centuries. But just because we don't have the whole story doesn't mean we can dismiss it outright. Books don't typically survive thousands of years. The fact that we even have fragments and mentions of these texts is still kind of a miracle. Plus, if the Book of Thoth was as powerful as legend claims, it makes sense that it would have been guarded closely, maybe by Thoth's priests or some kind of secret society. But you know what they say about secrets?

They always come out. And in the 20th century, a sinister magician thought he could harness the power of Thoth to create a new book, one that would give ordinary people like you and me direct access to Thoth's divine magic. Picture this. It's 1920 and you're in the small Italian village of Cefalu. You're seeing the sights and doing tourist stuff, when after sunset you come upon some weird chanting. You follow the sound and peep through the window of this fancy villa. You see occult symbols on the wall and some kind of bizarre ceremony is underway.

There's guys in robes singing and holding candles around a circle, while two people get it on in the middle. Watching over it all like some sort of creepy referee is a middle-aged man in a robe, wearing a serpent crown and holding a giant sword. It sounds like some sort of satanic haunted house, but this was a real place, called the Abbey of Thalema. And the guy with the sword was a real man named Alistair Crowley. Crowley wasn't just your average dabbler in the occult. To his fans, he was a visionary who had unlocked the secrets of ancient magic.

To his critics, he was a scandalous figure, reviled as a heretic, and dubbed the wickedest man in the world by the press. Crowley loved it though. He was larger than life, a poet, a mountaineer, and a self-proclaimed prophet of a new religious movement called the Lemma. They had special rituals, commandments, even their own descriptions of how the universe worked. He was born in 1875 to a fundamentalist Christian family which he clearly hated. He basically spent his entire life trying to reject everything they were about and dove head first into the worlds of mysticism and magic. By the early 20th century he was deeply involved in secret societies, like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Order taught a mishmash of spells and rituals from various traditions, including the Hermetica, which was where Crowley first learned about Thoth. But apparently Crowley was too much even for the Order. He was obsessed with the idea of gaining magical power, but he didn't really care how it was used. He basically said that anyone should be free to do whatever they liked and morality was a bunch of nonsense. The other members of the Order didn't agree, though. There was an epic struggle for control between Crowley and the poet William Butler Yeats. control between Crowley and the poet William Butler Yeats. Words were said, locks were changed, and at one point Crowley showed up in a kiln and

screamed profanities. After that, Crowley went on his own way, and at some point he made a breakthrough. Crowley claimed he could communicate with spirits, summon ancient gods, and access hidden dimensions. It sounds like the kind of magic you'd find in the Book of Thoth. Which is why some people think he actually found it. Or better yet, he gained the knowledge directly from Thoth himself. We aren't sure how.

Some think that Crawley discovered a ritual to summon Thoth, but in 1938, he started working on an ambitious project. A deck of tarot cards he called the Book of Thoth. And we know all about tarot cards, right, Rush? Because mom carried them in her purse to every party, every event. So. And we had our tarot cards read at the audio-chocality party, so we know a lot about it for sure. Yes. But in Crowley's eyes, the tarot card wasn't just a tool for divination. It was a gateway to ancient hidden truths. A way to connect with the same cosmic forces that the legendary book of Thoth was said

to hold. So in a way Crowley's Thoth tarot was his own version of the book of Thoth. While it's obviously not the same thing as the mythical book written by the god himself, it's like Crowley was trying to capture the essence of what the book represented. A map of the universe written in symbols and steeped in magic. Exactly. He even enlisted the help of an artist, Frida Harris. Together they crafted 78 cards, each exquisitely detailed and full of pictures with hidden

meanings. The thing is, I haven't found any stories of people using this deck and suddenly being able to fly or talk to animals. So if Thoth's magic really is in there, it's buried way deep. And there's really no way to know if any of it directly connects to the original book of Thoth. Although he'd studied the Hermetica, he never claimed to have laid eyes on the original ancient text.

If there is a connection, it's kind of like a game of telephone spread out over thousands of years. I'm sure a lot of it got garbled up in the process, it had to. Which is why I keep wondering, maybe there never was a book of thought in the first place. Maybe it's just some kind of metaphor the ancient Egyptians came up with. You know, like if all knowledge was a book, maybe we only get to see a page in our lifetimes. Except that in 1995, archaeologists studying ancient papyrus fragments discovered they were part of another book of thought. And this one could actually be the real deal.

It's not a storybook or some fanciful myth. It's a real collection of writings discovered on fragments of papyrus. It's from the first few hundred years BCE, and it's written in Demotic script, which is basically ancient shorthand. Scholars think this text, which they call Demotic Book of Thoth, could have been a practical guide for scribes and scholars learning the trade, and maybe even aspiring priests and healers. But the fragments we have from it today aren't full of flashy magic, like spells for summoning

the gods or enchanting the seas. Instead, it's full of practical advice, like how to hold a writing tool and what makes a person wise. But it's also deeply connected to the sacred rituals and knowledge that the Egyptians believed held the universe together. It answers questions like, what animals are sacred and how do we navigate the afterlife?

What's wild is that this text may have been a part of the training that priests underwent in the great temples of Egypt, where writing and magic were often intertwined. It shows us how knowledge itself was viewed as kind of a divine power, a direct link to Thoth, the god of wisdom. And while we can't say for sure if this text directly descends from the mythical book of Thoth, they've got a lot in common. Both are about unlocking hidden knowledge and understanding the mysteries of the universe. Honestly, I'm still wondering what happened to the first book? You know, the mythical one found at the bottom of the Nile? There are so many texts out there that claim to channel

the power or wisdom of the Book of Thoth. But the original mythical Help You Live Forever book? If it was real, it seems it's been lost to history. Either that or it was hidden away deliberately because its secrets were too dangerous to reveal. And you know what? That might be for the best because if we've learned anything from stories

about Setna or even Neferkata, it's that great power often comes at an even greater price. Exactly. Even if someone found the original Book of Thoth tomorrow, what would they do with it? The legends tell us it can change the world, but they also warn it can destroy whoever dares to wield it. It's one of those be careful what you wish for situations. And maybe that's the point. The ancient Egyptians didn't just see magic as something you could pick up and use. To them, magic was interwoven into every aspect of life, from the smallest everyday actions to the most sacred rituals.

Writing, farming, even breathing. Everything connected to the divine, to this unseen energy that flowed through all things. And maybe that's what the Book of Thoth really represents. And maybe that's what the Book of Thoth really represents. Not just a collection of spells or secret knowledge, but a reminder of how much power and wonder there is within us, and in the world around us. This is So Supernatural, an audio Chuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So SupernaturalPod and visit our website at SoSupernaturalPodcast.com. Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think Chuck?

Do you approve?