IThe edition

XIVFourteen pieces

Set tore his brother into fourteen pieces and scattered them across the land. Isis searched the whole of Egypt and found thirteen. The fourteenth was his penis. Set had flung it into the Nile, and a crocodile took it and swallowed it, and it was never found. So Isis made him a new one: an obelisk of gold.

I am making fourteen Osiris Boards, by hand, in stone and gold. Thirteen will go out into the world. The fourteenth stays here with me: the piece the crocodile kept.

IOffered
IIOffered
IIIOffered
IVOffered
VOffered
VIOffered
VIIOffered
VIIIOffered
IXOffered
XOffered
XIOffered
XIIOffered
XIIIOffered
XIVKept

All thirteen offered · No. XIV stays with me

17kinds of stone, crushed and inlaid by hand in real papyrus
24ksolid gold ankh, djed and Eye, and genuine gold leaf in every wall between the stones
φa golden-ratio playing surface, 23 × 14.21 in, inside a raised bumper cut with Spell 23
42lapis cartouches round the edges, one for each judge of the dead
25 × 16¼inches overall, 1¼ in deep, with the Weighing of the Heart on the back
☥the Ankh planchette with a clear-quartz window, in matching stone; nine more designs to order

**The Osiris Board** Rendering of the finished board, from above.

IIThe face

Move the lens across the board

Nothing on the face is painted. Every colour is a stone, crushed and packed by hand into a cell cut through real papyrus, the material the Book of the Dead was written on, walled with gold leaf or mother-of-pearl, then sanded dead flat and sealed under a glass-smooth coat so the planchette glides. Touch any gold point to read what it is; hold the lens over the board to see it close.

IIIThe story at the centre

The king, the queen, the brother, the son

Every spirit board rests on one question: can the dead still reach us? Egypt answered it more boldly than any civilization in history, and answered with a story.

Osiris was the good king who taught people to farm and to honour the gods. His brother Set, lord of storm and desert, envied him, tricked him into a coffin, sealed it, and threw it into the Nile. Isis found the coffin and hid her husband in the marshes, but Set, hunting by moonlight, found him first, tore him into fourteen pieces, and scattered them to the four corners of the world.

Isis did not grieve and let go. She searched the whole earth, weeping and chanting, and one by one she found thirteen pieces and gathered him back together. The fourteenth was his penis. Set had thrown it into the Nile, where a crocodile seized it and swallowed it whole, and no search could bring it back. So Isis made him a new one, an obelisk of gold, and with magic so great the Egyptians called her Weret-Hekau, “Great of Magic,” she breathed life into him long enough to conceive their son, Horus. Osiris did not return to the world of the living. He went further, and became lord of the Duat, king of everyone who has ever crossed over.

Plutarch, who wrote the oldest full account of the myth in the first century, feeds it to three fish of the Nile. The telling this board follows gives it to the crocodile, and so the crocodile lies on Set’s side of the board, and the golden obelisk Isis made stands opposite it.

So at the centre of the board Osiris and Isis stand face to face, drawn larger than every other figure, because in Egyptian sacred art size was a measure of power. Behind Osiris stands Set, who killed him. Behind Isis stands Horus, who avenged him. Chaos and order, the destroyer and the restorer, all hold their places on one board.

**The crocodile** It swallowed the fourteenth piece, the penis of Osiris, and lies on Set’s side of the board.

**The obelisk of gold** The new one Isis made to replace it, raised as an obelisk with a tip of gold.

IVEvery colour is a stone

Seventeen stones

Chosen for colour first and for the reputation each carries in occult tradition second, and only if it can survive being crushed, set and slid over. Hardness is on the Mohs scale, because the planchette will find the soft ones. What a stone is said to do is tradition, and I report it as tradition.

Lapis lazuli

The gods’ hair, Isis’s crown, the sky, the collars, all forty-two edge cartouches

The stone of heaven. The Egyptians said the hair of the gods was lapis, carved heart scarabs from it, and its flecks of pyrite read as stars.

Mohs 5–5.5

Malachite

The skin of Osiris; the cobras of the crowns

Ground for eye paint in Egypt, and the green of Osiris, “the Green One,” whose body every harvest rose from. Its dust is toxic, so it is cut and crushed wet.

Mohs 3.5–4

Carnelian

Isis’s gown, the wing tips, the red crown

The tyet, Isis’s knot, was prescribed in red stone in Spell 156 of the Book of the Dead; long held a stone of blood, vitality and courage.

Mohs 7

Red jasper

Set

Red was Set’s colour: the desert, the storm, violence. A binding stone for the god who bound his brother’s mouth.

Mohs 6.5–7

Tiger’s eye

The body and falcon head of Horus

Worn for centuries against the evil eye: the all-seeing stone for the god whose eye became the wedjat.

Mohs 7

Hawk’s eye

The beak of Horus

Blue tiger’s eye, named for the falcon, and associated with far sight and seeing through deception.

Mohs 7

Black obsidian

All twenty-six letters

The scrying stone. John Dee’s “magic mirror” was polished obsidian; here the spirits spell through black glass.

Mohs 5–5.5

Black tourmaline

The serpent Apep; the cloisonné fill

In modern occult practice the standard protective stone, said to absorb hostile energy. It is used for the chaos serpent, and as a ward.

Mohs 7–7.5

Labradorite

GO FORTH BY DAY

Long called the stone of magic and said to guard the veil between worlds. Crushed, it keeps its blue-green flash.

Mohs 6–6.5

Amethyst

The numbers

Carved into Egyptian amulets and scarabs; in later tradition the stone of psychic sight.

Mohs 7

Moonstone

The crescent moon of Khonsu

The moon, intuition and the night side of the board, set opposite the sun.

Mohs 6–6.5

Sunstone

The disk of Ra, the winged sun, YES, the scarab’s sun

Ra and his solar boat; the stone of daylight and plain answers, paired with moonstone across the top.

Mohs 6–6.5

Turquoise

The collars, the ankhs held by the gods, the register lines

Hathor was “Lady of Turquoise,” and the Egyptians mined it in Sinai: their stone of joy and rebirth.

Mohs 5–6

Citrine and yellow jasper

The skin of Isis

Egyptian painters gave women a yellow-ochre skin; citrine carries a solar, manifesting reputation.

Mohs 7

Rhodonite

The obelisk

Pink veined with black, like the Aswan rose granite real obelisks were cut from; said to heal old grief.

Mohs 5.5–6.5

Serpentine

The crocodile that swallowed the fourteenth piece

The “snake stone.” Egyptians carved heart scarabs from green stones like it.

Mohs 3–5.5

Garnet

The eyes of Set and Apep

Carried in old traditions as a light in the dark; it gives the two hostile beings a blood-red glint.

Mohs 6.5–7.5

VFlesh of the gods

Gold, and the moon’s metal

The Egyptians believed the gods had flesh of gold, bones of silver and hair of lapis lazuli. The Osiris Board is built from that belief.

Gold leaf. Every gold line on the board is genuine gold leaf, laid by hand after the stone is sanded flush and before the final coat, so the planchette can never wear it through. It forms the walls between the stones, as on the jewellery buried with Tutankhamun, and all the regalia of the gods: crook and flail, sceptres, crowns, collars, armlets, and the tip of the obelisk.

Solid gold. The ankh, the djed and the Eye of Horus are laid in solid 24-karat gold.

Mother-of-pearl. Where the Egyptians would have used silver, the moon’s metal, the board uses the lining of the shell: a material born in water and long linked with the moon, the tides and the womb. It takes every white and silver on the board: the letter and number bands, the cartouches, the wrappings of Osiris, the white crowns, the kilts and the crescent moon. As the light moves it shifts from rose to green to blue, and the board seems to breathe.

VIWritten to be spoken

The words on the board, and around it

The bumper: Spell 23, the Opening of the Mouth

Run your fingers along the raised bumper and you will feel words cut into the wood and filled with gold. They come from Spell 23 of the Book of the Dead, the spell spoken so that the mouth death had bound would be loosened to eat, breathe and answer. No passage the Egyptians wrote fits a talking board better. It begins at the sitter’s edge and runs round all four sides:

The sitter’s edgeHere beginneth the chapter of opening the mouth · May Ptah open my mouth
The right sideMay the god of my city loose the swathings over my mouth
The far edgeMay Thoth, furnished with words of power, loose the bandages of Set which fetter my mouth
The left sideMay Shu open my mouth with the iron knife wherewith he opened the mouths of the gods

**The sitter’s edge** Here beginneth the chapter of opening the mouth.

The wall of words

Behind the gods and the letters the papyrus is covered in writing, set in columns between rules of gold and read from the top, the way the Egyptians wrote on the walls of their tombs. Every sign belongs to a real sentence, chosen from the most celebrated lines of the Book of the Dead, and the sentences run on and repeat until they fill the field:

prt m hrwComing forth by day.The Book of the Dead’s own name for itself: let the dead step back out into the light.
Spell 17I am Yesterday; I know Tomorrow.The dead speaking with the voice of the creator, outside time.
Spell 30BO my heart of my mother, my heart of my mother, my heart of my forms!Carved on the heart scarabs laid over the dead, begging the heart to stay loyal at the Weighing.
Spell 125I have not done wrong.” “I am pure, I am pure, I am pure, I am pure!The Negative Confession, spoken before the forty-two judges in the Hall of Two Truths.
maa-kheruTrue of voice.Written after the name of anyone who passed the Weighing: justified, and alive forever.
Spell 23Spell for opening the mouth of Osiris.The title of the spell cut into the bumper.
The familyOsiris, the great god, lord of eternity.” “Isis the great, mother of the god; Horus, son of Isis.The three at the heart of the board, named in its ground.
The blessingGiven life, stability and dominion forever.The words written after the names of kings.

The Egyptians believed the written word had power of its own. These words were written to be spoken. On this board, they finally have a way to answer.

VIIMeasured like a temple

The numbers

The golden ratio. The playing surface is twenty-three inches wide and exactly 0.61803 of that in height, the proportion found in the spiral of a shell and the unfolding of a flower. The raised bumper adds an inch on every side: twenty-five by sixteen and a quarter inches overall, an inch and a quarter deep.

Forty-two. Round the outer edges run forty-two cartouches of lapis ringed in gold: thirteen on each long side, eight on each short side. Thirteen and eight are neighbours in the Fibonacci sequence, and their ratio closes in on the golden ratio again. Thirteen is the number of letters in each arch, the number of pieces of Osiris that Isis found, and the number of Death in the tarot; eight is the Ogdoad, the eight first gods of Hermopolis, the city of Thoth. Together they make forty-two: the judges who questioned every soul in the Hall of Two Truths.

Fourteen. The cartouches carry three lines of the Book of the Dead in gold, chosen above all others for a board that speaks with the dead. Each line fills exactly fourteen cartouches, one for every piece of Osiris, so every line read to its end makes him whole again. Gold beads mark where the second and third begin.

Spell 2Spell for going out into the day and living after death.The promise that the dead are not shut away.
Spell 25Spell for causing a man to remember his name in the realm of the dead.A soul that forgot its name was lost; this one keeps the name alive, so that when you call it, someone answers.
Spell 22My mouth is given to me, that I may speak with it in the realm of the dead.The voice itself.

The dead come out into the day, they remember who they are, and they are given a voice. Walk once around the board and you have read the whole of what it is for.

**The four edges, unrolled** Forty-two lapis cartouches, three spells of fourteen, starting at the sitter’s edge.

VIIIFour grounds

What lies under the gods

Four grounds were drawn for the board. The wall of words is the one it is being made on; the other three were drawn with it, on an earlier state of the layout.

The wall of words ground — The ground the board is being made on: columns of real Book of the Dead text between rules of gold, so the whole field reads like a tomb wall.

IXThe hidden face

Judgement

Turn the board over and you find what most people will never see. At its centre is a great tarot card, XX, Judgement, the card of the dead rising at the call of the trumpet, drawn as its oldest ancestor: the Weighing of the Heart. Anubis steadies the scales. On one side lies the heart of the dead; on the other, the feather of Maat, truth itself. Ibis-headed Thoth stands ready with his palette to record the verdict. Ammit crouches, waiting. Above it all the ba, the soul-bird that could fly between the tomb and the world of the living, watches its own heart being weighed.

Two gilded jackals guard the scene from their shrines, each above a cartouche bearing the name of Anubis. Across the top runs a line that sums up an Egyptian belief as moving as any in the ancient world, in modern words: to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again. A person’s name, their ren, was part of their soul; as long as it was spoken, they endured. That is, in the end, what a spirit board does.

At the bottom centre sits my seal: a pyramid bearing the Eye of Horus.

The back of the Osiris Board — The back, on the Flower of Life of Abydos.

XThe pointers

Ten planchettes

Each planchette is built like the board: stone and mother-of-pearl in gold-walled cells under a clear coat, riding on felt-covered feet, with a reading window of clear quartz about an inch and a quarter across, big enough to frame a whole letter, even an M or a W, while its neighbours stay outside. Each one leads with its window, set just behind its front edge, so that it can reach the targets along the raised border. Every design was tested on the board against all thirty-nine targets, the twenty-six letters, ten numbers, YES, NO and GO FORTH BY DAY, and every one reaches all thirty-nine without leaving the playing surface. The Ankh comes with the board; the other nine are available separately, in matching stone.

The Ankh

The key of life

3¾ × 5 in · window 1.24 × 1.52 in

Comes with every cased board

The sign of life that every god on the board carries, and the one gods held to the lips of the dead to give them breath. The loop leads, with the window set in it, in turquoise beaded with carnelian and mother-of-pearl; the crossbar and stem follow, with the djed and the was sceptre in gold completing the blessing that circles the board: life, stability, dominion. It comes with every cased board, in matching stone.

The Wedjat

The eye that sees

4¾ × 3½ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The Eye of Horus: torn out by Set, restored by Thoth, and the most widely worn protective amulet in Egypt. The gold-edged obsidian brow leads; you read through the pupil, a quartz window in a lapis iris, while the mother-of-pearl eye, the falcon’s teardrop and the spiral trail behind.

The Ba

The soul that travels

5 × 5½ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The human-headed soul-bird, believed to leave the tomb by day to visit the living and return at night, which is exactly what a spirit board asks of the dead. It is crowned with the sun, and the sun is the window; the gold face, the cloisonné wings and the lapis tail follow.

The Scarab

The sun reborn

3½ × 5¼ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

Khepri, pushing the sun up out of the underworld at dawn. The sun he rolls is the window; his gold head, lapis thorax and wing cases follow on six gold legs, walled in gold and edged in carnelian and turquoise, as on the scarab pectorals of Tutankhamun. Heart scarabs, carved with Spell 30B, were laid over the hearts of the dead.

The Tyet

The knot of Isis

3½ × 5¼ in · window 1.24 × 1.52 in

Available separately

Isis’s knot, called her blood, which Spell 156 of the Book of the Dead prescribes in red stone to wrap her protection round the dead. A carnelian loop holds the window; a gold binding set with sunstone, the two arms of the sash and its long pleated fall in carnelian over lapis follow behind.

The Shen

The ring of eternity

2½ × 2¼ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

A loop of rope tied so it has no end: eternity, and everything the sun encircles. The cartouche round a king’s name grew from it, and so did the forty-two round the edges of this board. Lapis twisted with gold on a carnelian bar, with the window in the ring: the smallest of the planchettes.

The Akhet

The horizon

4¾ × 2½ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The sun between the two mountains where it rises and sets: the place of coming forth by day. The sun is the window; the mountains are red jasper banded in gold, on a lapis earth set with gold stars.

The Ib

The heart

2¾ × 3 in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The heart, seat of memory and conscience, weighed against the feather of Maat on the back of this board. Shaped like the heart amulets laid with the dead: a carnelian body round the window, gold lugs, a lapis neck and a gold rim beaded with mother-of-pearl.

The Ka

The life force

2¾ × 2½ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The ka, the life every person carried, for which every offering to the dead was made, written as two raised arms. Here the arms lead, lapis with open gold hands, and hold the window between them.

The Winged Sun

Horus of Behdet

5¼ × 2¼ in · window 1.28 × 1.28 in

Available separately

The winged sun disk carved over temple doors to guard them, and the sign that carries GO FORTH BY DAY on the board. The disk is the window; two cobras of malachite hang beside it, and the wings spread in mother-of-pearl, lapis and carnelian.

**All the planchettes, at true proportion** Front edge up. The Ankh comes with the board; the others are available separately.

**The Ankh at work** Parked on six of the hardest spots on the board, its window over each target.

XITwo editions

Keep one

✦The cased edition

Fourteen boards. Thirteen offered.

Nos. I to XIII offered; No. XIV kept by me, as the fourteenth piece was kept by the crocodile.
Seventeen stones, crushed and inlaid by hand in real papyrus, walled with genuine gold leaf and mother-of-pearl.
The ankh, the djed and the Eye of Horus in solid 24-karat gold.
A golden-ratio face, 23 × 14.21 in, inside a raised bumper cut with Spell 23 and filled with gold; 25 × 16¼ in overall and 1¼ in deep.
Forty-two lapis cartouches round the edges; the Weighing of the Heart on the back.
The Ankh planchette in matching stone, with a clear-quartz window. Nine more to order: the Wedjat, the Ba, the Scarab, the Tyet, the Shen, the Akhet, the Ib, the Ka and the Winged Sun.
Numbered, cased, and entered in my register in the keeper’s name.

Price on application

The boards are in the making. Ask, and I will send photographs of the work in progress.

Enquire about a board

✦The printed edition

The same board, within reach.

A limited edition, printed from the same master artwork as the fourteen.
Every god, every letter, every cartouche and every line of the wall of words, at full resolution.
Made with the same care and of sublime quality, at a fraction of the price.
No inlaid stone and no gold: those belong to the fourteen alone.
Released after the cased edition.

$289

Join the list and you will hear first, before it is announced anywhere else.

Join the list

XIITo the keeper

Some doors are made

People who own the Osiris Board tend not to say they own it. They say they keep it.

To keep this board is to be trusted with a great deal: seventeen kinds of stone, real gold, the oldest story of love outlasting death, and a spell more than three thousand years old asking that the dead be allowed to speak.

Light a candle. Speak the names of those you miss. Place your fingers on the planchette and wait, the way priests waited in the temple before dawn. Under the gods, over the words that carried the dead into the light, inside a ring of forty-two cartouches, with the Opening of the Mouth written around you, you will not be speaking into empty air. You will be speaking at a door the Egyptians spent three thousand years learning how to open.

Read the keeper’s essay

✦Enquire

Write to me

Ask about a board in the cased edition, a planchette, or anything on this page. I reply myself, usually within a day, and I will send photographs of the work in progress.

✦The list

The printed edition

One letter when the printed edition is ready, and another if a board in the cased edition becomes free. Nothing else.

Or write directly: sales@osirisboards.com