Shu

Shu is an Egyptian god of air, breath and the separation of sky from earth. His raised arms are among the most recognisable gestures in Egyptian cosmic imagery. In Crowley's ritual vocabulary, the sign of Shu supporting the sky also names a posture associated with the element Air. The ancient deity and the modern ritual sign are related subjects with different sources.

In the Heliopolitan divine family, Shu and Tefnut descend from Atum and become the parents of Geb and Nut. Shu holds Nut away from Geb, opening the space in which life can unfold. One creation account connects his birth with Atum's exhalation, giving breath a direct place in the divine narrative.¹⁾

His association with air includes both wind and the conditions of living. The name's etymology is uncertain; the museum glossary discusses possible connections with rising and emptiness. A man wearing a feather is a common representation, but the supporting gesture is especially important in scenes involving earth and sky. The feather, name and action should be read together rather than treated as interchangeable identifiers for every feather-bearing god.

A Late Period faience amulet in the Metropolitan Museum, dated 664–332 BCE, presents Shu kneeling with his arms raised beneath a disk. Only 3.5 centimetres high, it translates a cosmic action into a portable object. The museum interprets the disk as an allusion to the sky.²⁾

The pose gives the object its meaning even at a small scale. It is an image of support: a figure maintains the separation through which the world exists. The amulet's date and material also distinguish it from modern drawings that reproduce the pose without identifying an ancient model. A modern ritual illustration may be informative about ceremonial magic while supplying little evidence about how this particular amulet was used.

Shu, Nut and Geb are most intelligible as a relationship. Shu occupies the interval between the upper and lower figures; the composition joins bodily forms to a picture of the world. The sarcophagus of Wereshnefer gives a surviving example of this arrangement in a funerary setting.³⁾

The three names do not label three successive ages. They describe a cosmic arrangement. Crowley's aeons of Isis, Osiris and Horus, by comparison, use divine names to organise a theory of religious change. Keeping these two structures distinct prevents an Egyptian family tree from being mistaken for a Thelemic chronology.

Shu's association with air also connects him with light. The Global Egyptian Museum's account relates the sunlight permeating the air to his relationship with Re, and notes a later association with the moon as a light on the route through the underworld. This extends his significance beyond a modern division in which air, sun and moon must occupy entirely separate compartments.⁴⁾

The relationships are intelligible within a world in which the separation of earth and sky makes movement and illumination possible. Air is both the interval sustained between divine bodies and a condition of the visible world. Describing Shu simply as “the air god” identifies an important domain, but leaves out the actions through which that domain becomes part of a religious account of life.

On the sarcophagus of Wereshnefer, Shu appears in more than one cosmic arrangement. In a scene at the head of the lid he raises the sun; elsewhere he supports Nut above Geb. The first emphasises solar emergence, while the second gives the larger separation of sky and earth.⁵⁾

The resemblance between the gestures should not conceal their different objects. Raising the sun and sustaining the sky are connected activities within the composition, but they are not identical scenes. Following what the hands support, and which figures surround the god, is therefore essential to reading an individual image.

This comparison also clarifies what happens when a ceremonial sign isolates a posture from a larger composition. The bodily form remains recognisable while its setting is supplied by the ritual using it. An ancient funerary scene and a modern grade sign can share an image without sharing every narrative and purpose attached to it.

Liber O describes an Air sign in which the arms are raised and bent as though supporting a weight. Its traditional description invokes Shu supporting the sky. Within the ritual's sequence of elemental signs, the posture belongs to the symbolic language of the magician's body.⁶⁾

The resemblance to the ancient supporting figure is meaningful, but the application to an elemental grade belongs to the modern magical system. A pose can be borrowed while its setting and purpose change. Here it becomes one part of a set that also includes signs for Earth, Water, Fire and Spirit, rather than a complete reconstruction of Egyptian temple worship.

The written instruction emphasises the imagined load:

Stretch both arms upwards and outwards, the elbows bent at right angles, the hand bent back, the palms upwards as if supporting a weight.

— Aleister Crowley, Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae.⁷⁾

The palms and bent elbows make support, rather than a general upward reach, the defining action. This helps connect the ceremonial pose with the image of Shu holding up the sky. It also gives a reader something precise to compare with the amulet’s raised arms. The comparison concerns a recognisable gesture carried into a later practice; it need not imply that the ancient object prescribed Crowley’s sequence of pentagrams.

Figure 2, immediately above the bottom photograph, illustrates the Air sign. Its caption identifies Shu supporting the sky. The bent elbows and upturned palms can be compared directly with the written description above and with the ancient amulet earlier in this article.

The neighbouring pictures belong to other signs. In particular, figure 9 at the top raises the arms into the V of Typhon; a general resemblance between raised arms does not make it the same gesture. The original numbering provides a more reliable guide than identifying every upward-reaching pose as Shu.⁸⁾

Liber O (1909), The Signs of the Grades. Figure 2, second from the bottom in the central column, is captioned Air: the god Shu supporting the sky. Source facsimile: Keep Silence. Public domain: original published in 1909. Click the image to enlarge.

Liber O distinguishes several parts of ceremonial technique that are easily compressed into the single phrase “assuming a god-form”. Its third section begins with study of divine images and the formation of a mental image corresponding with the body. Its later directions address the vibration of a divine name. The illustrated grade signs supply a further set of physical gestures. Shu's supporting posture belongs within this larger account of how a body, an image and a name can be coordinated.⁹⁾

The distinction explains what is being borrowed from the ancient image. A kneeling figure in an amulet supports the sky as part of a cosmic scene. The magician's sign selects the raised, supporting arms for an elemental vocabulary. It need not reproduce every feature of the ancient object, including its material, size or posture of the legs. The resemblance is concentrated in a meaningful action.

Crowley’s preparatory work asks the student to move between observation and recollection:

They should then be carefully painted by him, both from the model and from memory.

— Aleister Crowley, Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae.¹⁰⁾

The preceding sentences recommend studying accessible museum images or books. Painting from a model tests attention to what is present; painting from memory tests what has been retained. Only afterwards does the instruction turn to imagining the god-form around the body. For Shu, this creates a useful sequence from an observed object, through a remembered form, to a performed posture. The exercise’s stated purpose should remain distinct from what the museum object documents historically.

Shu's sign becomes clearer beside the other elemental signs in the same publication. The plate names Set in the Earth position, Auramoth for Water and Thoum-aesh-neith for Fire. The selection turns several divine figures into parts of a coordinated ceremonial sequence. It is not a genealogical grouping of those gods.¹¹⁾

This arrangement gives the Air sign two simultaneous relationships: one to its Egyptian model and another to the neighbouring signs in a modern system. The second relationship is why the same gesture can signify a particular grade or element without supplying a complete account of Shu's ancient worship.

Air and breath should also be distinguished when comparing the ritual with Crowley's yoga instructions. The Air sign is a posture within a symbolic sequence; pranayama is treated through exercises in the regulation of breath. Both involve the body, but identifying their shared vocabulary does not make them the same practice. See Liber E for the separate instructional setting of posture, breathing and concentration.

For the training context, see A∴A∴ grades and the Tree of Life. For the broader relationship between Egyptian images and Thelemic interpretation, see Egyptian gods and Thelemic adaptations.