What is Reddit's opinion of Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many?

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That tattoo is of "Ouroboros." It is an incredibly telling detail, as it comes from Egyptian iconography depicting a serpent consuming itself.

This book covers the "Ouroboros" in precise detail (book link here: https://www.amazon.com/Conceptions-God-Ancient-Egypt-Many/dp/0801483840) about Ouroboros representing the amorphous disorder that perforates and envelops our "orderly" world and, in a perverted twist of duality, also represents the perpetual renewal of our world. How? It is built upon consuming ourselves through self-destruction and how that happens in a dynamic variety of ways, manners, and forms.

BONUS: Lena says to her class...

>"The cell we're looking at is from a tumor. Female patient, early thirties, taken from the cervix. Over the course of the next term, we will be closely examining cancer cells in-vitro and discussing autophagic activity."

The term "autophagy" comes from the Ancient Greek "αὐτόφαγος/autóphagos", which translates to "self-devouring." What else have we discussed that self-devours? An interesting question, but I slightly digress.

This is not to imply that the Egyptians knew of other worlds or life forms. It's to imply this self-consuming infinite cycle is unbreakable and almost feels tangible when looking at the world from a certain angle.

And looking from a certain angle is this film. It's an intrinsic and tangible portion of us (cancer, failed relationship, a daughter's passing and the blame shouldered, a woman seeking to fill an existential void...) and our unique self-destruction that the aliens are replicating at their peak function. It's why the Bear is screaming in Sheppard's voice. It captured her final cries from her voice box, as opposed to her brain. This choice is intentional. It demonstrates that our tendency to existentially implode is hard-wired in an almost hereditary manner.

Everyone shares some tragedy or internal crisis that propels us toward our own annihilation. We struggle to feel worthy of existence itself and that is so strong, it is passed onto a life-form capable of manifesting it with literal and objective corporeality.

In the very end, bullets cannot challenge the adapting creature's existence because it is mimicking humanity. It only falls after it takes it's own life and it's own submissive existence is forced to expunge itself unto Lena. It tries aggressively and cannot succeed. It only succeeds when it gives into it's own destruction and "perfectly adapts", so to speak.

To summarize? It essentially adapts flawlessly, as it is a clearly advanced species, but it adapts to a part of our humanity, which can only be expressed with physical distinction, that is the absolute worst flaw.

>Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I'd say you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide... and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives, we drink, or we smoke. We destabilize the good job. Or the happy marriage. These aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses. In fact, you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

>Lena: What does that mean?

>Ventress, after scoffing: You're a biologist. Isn't self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

The sound of a loud, brief, and sharp interruption is heard in the distance...

>Lena: What was that?

>Ventress: Don't know.

Look at the answers from anyone potentially influenced by the Alien. They offer that they "don't know" or show doubt when discussing what has happened, from a soldier to a qualified biologist. Is Ventress? I don't know but her understanding leads to the alien coming closer to the realization that self-destruction is humanity's strongest internal (and perhaps repressed) drive so it takes several transfers, duplications, and even assimilation to finally reach this conclusion and it profoundly changes the alien and normalizes it into the human hierarchy. It has adapted to our instinctual low-humming of how we must expire with finality to inch forward to do it once more.

The alien effectively becomes a living, breathing, and physically existing manifestation of self-destruction. The movie argues that perhaps we are as well, which is why everything is normal at the end (When Kane and Lena reunite and are totally unsure of their own identities) except for "shimmers" (yeah, heard "shimmer" before?) in the eyes of both Kane and Lena. We, as people, "don't know" because Lena encounters a mimicking shadow of ourselves that refuses to let her leave even though it mimics her. No, not mimics her... It's her self-defeating effigy. That instinct to collapse within ourselves comes full circle and the serpent eats once more.

Amor fati, my friend. Just my two cents.

BONUS: Absolutely enormous allegorical moment when Lena reads The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks within the film in a flashback. A hint is "HeLa cells." ;)

Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt by Erik Hornung is a good introduction to the topic by way of religious/cultic practice.