These people did not practice cremation of the dead, because they did not think it right to skip all the intervening purgations, or reincarnations, by projecting the ego back into the Absolute at once.
They embalmed their honored dead and mummified their bodies in order that the individuality might be preserved, so that in the next incarnation memory might function on the physical plane.
There are excellent examples of this practice found in the catacombs in Mexico and Peru as well as in Egypt where the descendants of Atlantis employed the same rites. The Egyptian “Book of the Dead” pertains entirely to initiation, or the finding of the Perfect Way in this life; and the well-known portions of it found with mummies are simply certificates of initiation.
It is a curious fact in psychology that, so long as the physical body is preserved, the astral counterpart cannot disintegrate; and as memory is a function of the astral man, the Egyptian adepts expect to take up their life work again with a full knowledge of the past.
The negative magnetic laws govern the astral and psychic qualities of man, while the positive electric currents control the physical. Time and space have no influence over the former conditions—facts which were well known to primitive civilizations.
The papakoo, or cemetery of Tlamco, was a terraced range of hills, south of Mountain Lake, then called the River of Mystery, which still lies between Golden Gate Park and the ocean on the north. It is much shrunken in proportions and depth, though retaining the same oblong outline. The hills form a natural divide between the Park and Sutro Heights, and then as now jutted into the ocean at their northern extremity.
For six weeks the embalmers were engaged with the body of Orondo, and when they had finished, it was completely mummified. They put salt on his breast, as an emblem of immortality, and a gold gorget around his neck, with the inscription:
“O Hidden Being! Turn thy face toward the body of thy son!”
The corpse was wrapped in fine linen bandelettes, and a Saint Andrew’s cross of copper was laid over the region of the heart outside the enveloping swathes.
In the northwestern portion of the city, at the upper end of the lake, was the Temple of Uranus, where dwelt the priesthood who had charge of the dead.