Sourut is an Egyptian god of the underworld, a minor deity associated with the judgment of souls and the punishment of the wicked. The name Sourut may derive from the Egyptian root srqt or srq, meaning “to make breathe” or “to cause to swallow,” pointing to his role in consuming the hearts of the unworthy in the Hall of Ma’at.

Position on the Tree of Life

Sourut corresponds to the Thirtieth Path of the Tree of Life, the Path of Resh (the Sun), linking the spheres of Hod and Yesod. In the structure of Liber 777, this places him on the Succedent column of the thirtieth step, a position shared with Anubis (Path 15) and Hecate (Path 18) in their respective rows.

Astrological and planetary correspondence

Under this Path, Sourut is attributed to the Sun in Libra—a paradoxical pairing of the solar principle of illumination with the scales of judgment, reflecting his function as an executor of divine law. In Crowley’s schema, this also ties him to the element of Air in its judicial aspect.

Historical context

Sourut appears in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Spell 125B), where he is depicted as a crouching figure armed with a knife, waiting beside the scales of Ma’at. He is sometimes identified as a servant of Anubis or of Thoth, tasked with devouring the hearts of those who fail the Weighing of the Heart. His name is recorded in the Pyramid Texts (Utterance 364) as a guardian of the gate of the underworld. Later Greek sources confused him with the dog-headed demon Ammit; however, Sourut is distinct in being a feeder on hearts rather than a composite crocodile-lion-hippopotamus chimera. Budge’s The Gods of the Egyptians notes Sourut as one of the “Devourers of the Dead,” though he is seldom depicted in tomb art outside the judgment vignettes of the papyrus of Ani.

In Liber 777

Table LXXVII lists Sourut as the Egyptian god of Path 29, paired with the Hebrew letter Resh, the number 200, and the magical formula of the Sun. He stands here as the punishing aspect of the solar Horus, balancing mercy with wrath. The table’s corresponding animal is the jackal, further linking him to Anubis’s psychopompic family, and the number of his step reflects completion and judgment.