AN INTERVIEW WITH NORMANDI ELLIS Normandi Ellis is the author of Awakening Osiris, her haunting translation of The Egyptian Book of the Dead. She has also written a collection of short stories, Sorrowful Mysteries, Desperate Measures, a play produced by the University of Kentucky Women Writers' Conference, and, most recently, Voice Forms, a collection of prose poetry, and Feasts of Light: Celebrations for the Seasons of Life Based on the Egyptian Goddess Festival Calendar. She conducts workshops on creative writing and the ancient Egyptian concept of spiritual bodies. Ellis also teaches creative writing in middle schools, high schools, and elementary schools as an Artist in Residence in the State of Kentucky. How did you become interested in ancient Egypt in the first place, and what led you to translate The Egyptian Book of the Dead? Since there are no accidents, I've come to think of it as ancient Egypt becoming interested in me. Why I'm not sure. What happened is that I had a friend who had been studying with the Rosicrucians, and I had not seen this fellow for several years, though we had grown up down the street from each other. In the meantime, the Vietnam War had happened, and he had been drafted. His father was a doctor and had gotten him into a medic unit, but when he found out he was going to go, he got a call from a man somewhere in Ohio who was a Rosicrucian, who said, "I understand you're going to be a medic in Vietnam and you'll be assisting souls in transition, so I'm going to teach you what I know." So he went and studied with this man. | |
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