Thoth picture

Object location: Bedroom

This image of the Ibis-headed Egyptian god Thoth, whom the Greeks called Hermes, was placed by Sangharakshita above the door of his bedroom. It had also hung on his living-room door at Madhyamaloka in Birmingham, where he lived before his move to Adhisthana. Between 2010 and 2015 Sangharakshita self-published a number of books with the help of Dharmacharini Kalyanaprabha. When asked what the name of the publishing house of this new venture should be, he replied, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Well, there are penguin books, puffin books, and pelican books. Let us be Ibis Publications.’ 

Over the years many a picture had taken its turn on the door, as my mood or interest dictated, but there is one picture that has lasted longer than any other and which, for the last five or six years, has confronted my gaze whenever I looked across the room.… Thoth is the scribe of the gods, as well as being the inventor of writing and author of the Book of the Dead and other sacred texts, so that it is not difficult for us to see him as the revealer or communicator of divine wisdom to mankind. Hermes, similarly, communicates the will of Zeus to the lesser gods and to mortal men. Both Thoth and Hermes are channels of communication between heaven and earth, the divine and the human, even the transcendental and the mundane.

A Moseley Miscellany, Ibis Publications, Ledbury 2015, pp.88, 90–1