Archive for June, 2013

My body speaks, my lips repeat
pure Ihy-music for Hethert.
Music, millions
and hundreds and thousands of it,
Because You love music,
a million of music for Your ka,
In all Your places.

~ King Antef (source: Hathor Rising, A. Roberts)

Personal conjecture: Ihy is Hethert’s (Hathor’s) son, Whose name reflects the jubilation of musical instruments in the sound they produce and in the act of playing them. “Ihy-music” in this may indicate both Ihy, Whose music soothes and pleases His mother, and also, more generally, ecstatic music.

I always thought of Summer Solstice as a Wiccan thing (when I was young), or an eclectic-pagan thing (when I was slightly older). I didn’t think it would follow me home to Kemeticism.

But here it is, a radiant drop of sunlight in the form of a lioness, the Wandering Goddess come home to Kemet at the peak of the daylit year.

As part of writing about Anhur, I summarized the Myth of the Distant Goddess:

The myth, in short, tells the tale of the Eye of Ra becoming angry and leaving Kemet (Egypt) to go away, often to Nubia. The reason that the Eye goddess becomes angry can vary, but a frequent version of the myth tells how Ra sends his Eye to search for Shu and Tefnut, Who have gone off wandering in the world that is not yet done being created; when the Eye finds Them and returns Them to Ra, She finds that Ra has grown another Eye in Her absence. Angry with Her replacement, She storms off and wanders the desert, hostile and disconsolate.

In order to regain His protection under the Eye goddess, Ra sends a hunter-seeker to find Her and persuade Her to return. Depending on the version, the god Ra sends accomplishes this feat by a mixture of cajoling, praise, promises of riches and joys upon Her return, and reminders of the Eye’s duty to Her father. When the Eye comes back to civilized lands, She is met with rejoicing, offerings, and festivities by the people of Kemet.

Different gods can play the roles of the Eye and the seeker in this myth. Often, it’s Shu who is sent to bring His sister-consort Tefnut back; other times, it’s Djehuty in His baboon form that teases and flatters an Eye goddess like Hethert (Hathor) or Tefnut until She agrees to return. However, Anhur Himself is often the hunter Who finds, and the Eye Whom He brings back is Mekhit/Mehit/Menhit, the lioness Who then becomes His consort and wife.

Today, the Summer Solstice, is the Feast of Hethert, Eye of Ra—today we celebrate the Lady of Gold’s return to Kemet in the longest day of the year. Today is the joyous peak of the year’s wheel, the explosion of life and heat and light that shines in glory of Hethert’s return to us.

The beauty of your face
Glitters when you rise,
O come in peace.

One is drunk
At your beautiful face,
O Gold, Hathor.

~ inscription from a tomb at Thebes (source: Hathor Rising, A. Roberts)

Welcome home, Hethert, Mistress of Heaven! You bless the world with Your smile and the warmth You bring. Dua Hethert, Gracious One!

Last year’s first M post was a Monstrous Manifesto.

I took a bit of catfish from my partner’s dinner plate and squirreled it away with a piece of crabcake from my own meal, wrapping them both in a napkin and tucking it into my shirt pocket. When he didn’t bat an eye or remark on my seafood hoarding, I laughed. “It’s for Treading the Fishes,” I told him, and he made the ohhh of recognition. For a non-Kemetic, he’s pretty savvy.

Treading the Fishes is a multi-day festival that celebrates recurring fertility and kingship; lasting from III Shomu 19 (Monday) to III Shomu 23 (Friday), it involves the king treading on dried fish, hence the name. Stomping the fish is symbolic of conquering isfet (uncreation), but also ties into the cyclical fertility of the land, as the fish are buried to provide nutrients to the soil for the next growing season. The king would also re-dedicate herself to her nation of Kemet and offer the Heqa sceptor, a symbol of rulership, to Khnum, the Netjeru Who makes the each human on His potter’s wheel.

So I took my tiny bit of fishes out to our little garden-like section near the front door and dug a shallow pit, then tucked the food, now wrapped inside a folded paper, into the soil. I covered the packet with fresh dirt, watered it with pure water (to help the paper start decomposing), and gave it a good couple stomps; I am certainly no king or representative of one, but I am happy to participate in symbolically refertilizing the earth and helping ensure the next good growing season. The act of setting aside some bounty to fuel and welcome the next surge of abundance feels very important to me, not to mention useful and applicable in many different areas of life.

On the paper that held the now-dried fish, I had written a little heka:

As the land provides for me,
so I provide for the land in what ways I can;
as Netjer provides for me,
so I offer to Netjer in what ways I can.
I give back part of what I receive
to open the way for abundance.
Dua Wesir and Set, Who dance the cycle
of green growth and fallow rest,
both equal in the eyes of Ma’at!
Dua Geb, Who encompasses both crest and trough,
Who makes us mortals live with His gifts!

I don’t really like lions. This is hilarious for two reasons and understandable for the third:

1) I draw some hefty parallels between the behavior and physiology of the extinct-in-the-wild Barbary/Atlas lion and myself. I don’t consider the Barbary lion to be totemic—it’s not an external entity to me—but I do find it to be a disconcertingly accurate mirror into my own instincts, intuition, internalized sense of self, and social patterns (or lack thereof). If you stuffed a baby Barbary lion into a human suit and raised it as a person, it might turn out a lot like I have. This is both a sorta-cool thing and a frequent disadvantage in normal human life. :)

2) Two of my gods, Sekhmet and Ma’ahes, are leonine deities. I never see either of Them as purely human; They always appear as animal-headed people or full lions, often wreathed in flame (Sekhmet) or magma-skinned (Ma’ahes). The traditional symbolism of the African lion (power, nobility, dominance/lordship, the sun) and African lioness (ferocity, motherhood, the tribe, the sun) is very intense in Them and reflects a large part of Their characters.

3) I freaking love spotted hyenas. African lions are pretty much meh in comparison. I also think they’re kinda over-hyped, and as I am secretly a hipster, I tend to stray away from anything “too” mainstream. I prefer investigating the obscure and exploring the little corners, rather than strolling down the big ole well-trodden pathways.

A large part of the disconnect between me and the African lion is not just thanks to my adoration of hyenas or my elemental-lion impressions from my Netjeru—it’s due to the drastic differences between Barbary lions, with which I identify, and the African lions that everyone’s familiar with. Barbaries weren’t pride animals; they lived alone or in hunting pairs. While males and females were still sexually dimorphic in terms of size and mane, they didn’t serve different social or gender roles; each Barbary still had to hunt, claim and defend territory, and find a mate. And, speaking of territory, Barbaries lived in the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa, where the terrain was, well, mountainous, and the climate was semi-seasonal instead of the hot savanna’s whomping dry-wet cycles.

So the lions I grok are not the lions everyone refers to when they say “lion,” and while I am appreciative of the uniqueness of African lion social structure and other facets of their physiology and behavioral patterns, I just don’t admire and geek out over them like I do other animals like hyenas, scorpions, and snakes. The physical reality of the animal doesn’t win me over, even as I can respect the power that the lion wields in mythology and symbolism. Even with Barbary lions, my reaction is more “welp, that’s me” instead of “HOLY CRAP THEY ROCK.”

That said, I still love lion gods:

image source

Last year’s first L post was on magical language.

This post is part of the Kemetic Round Table, which aims to answer some of the most common questions and provide a wealth of diverse options for the Kemetic novice to explore.

How did you get started in Kemeticism? Tips? Stories?

Tips? Nah. Stories, on the other hand… oh, yes.

Let’s get the non-Kemetic background out of the way: I was raised nominally Christian. My dad is a Roman Catholic, my mom was loosely a Baptist. We didn’t do church, except for once in a while with my dad’s parents. I didn’t grok Jesus but talked to God a little, and when in my zealous ignorance I offended a non-Christian friend as a teenager, I took it upon myself to learn more about non-Christian religions. I studied Wicca, then began practicing Wicca, along with non-denominational energywork and totemism and Otherworld journeying. My mom was in the know and vetted the books I bought. At eighteen, I swore myself into the Goddess’s service and came out to my parents about being pagan (and being queer, because I am an honest sonuva). Over time, my flavor of paganism changed from Wicca to eclectic nature-lovin’ to monolatry (the Divine is both Many and One) to almost-agnostic.

And then, after years of not having any specific god other than brief glimpses of Brigid and Lugh… I met Sekhmet.

To be exact, I called on Her. It was 2005, and I was a social and emotional doormat, and I knew I needed to grow a spine—so I petitioned a lioness goddess with enough Fire to light one under my ass. I had done some cursory digging on potential deity fits, and since I identified so strongly with the lion, a feline god was particularly appealing. So it was Sekhmet I prayed to, and Sekhmet I invoked, and Sekhmet Who answered with Her fierce, no-nonsense strength.

Years passed as I danced around Her flames, orbiting Her intensity like a reckless moon, glittering with the light She threw across me. As our relationship gradually, in fits and starts, deepened and strengthened, She demanded more traditional worship of me. I, the eclectic, the soil-palmed shapeshifter, could not reconcile my spontaneity with the formality and gilded perfection of ancient Egyptian ceremonialism. So we compromised: She would forgive my forms of ritual and worship, and I would at least research, study, and understand ancient Egyptian religion and mythology.

I had been alone in my devotion to my Red Lady, but I did know two other Egyptian pagans. (I didn’t know the word Kemetic back then.) One was a fellow devotee of Sekhmet, and one was a Jackal-child; the latter was a member of Kemetic Orthodoxy, an Egyptologist-led Kemetic temple that seemed to espouse soft reconstructionism. I balked at the idea of socializing with an entire temple in order to learn, bared my teeth at their insistence on “real” information (like name and birth date) in order to join a beginner’s course. I was a lurker who self-taught at my own pace, and the idea of being visible to more than a couple of people at a time unnerved me deeply.

But I promised Her, didn’t I? And the beginner course was no-obligation. So I swallowed my instincts and stepped into the light, flinching all the while. I clung to Sekhmet like a child to the hem of its mother’s dress, and She tolerated my inanity; She had never coddled me. In all our years together, She had defended me fiercely on the rare occasion I needed defending, and She had interceded on my behalf when I bartered a favor for Her to do so, but not once did She give me the impression that She would put up with my bullshit, my whining, and most especially, my rampant insecurity. I had come to love Her with a blinding devotion that I still can’t explain, and I could not forget that She was only in my life at my request, not Her own insistence.

Stepping into Kemetic Orthodoxy was an eye-opener. My nervousness at being visible soon faded to manageable levels, and I felt welcomed by a warm, engaged, smart community. Diversity was welcomed, not just tolerated. People were encouraged to both learn about the Netjeru from historical sources and to experience Them personally, subjectively. The tenets of Kemeticism matched up flawlessly with my own values, and with the worldview I had created and adopted for myself at Sekhmet’s urging years earlier, when we both tired of how many externally-imposed ideas I was trying to make work in my own paradigm.

During the beginner course, all students are encouraged to open themselves to Netjer and not focus on any particular gods. Hah! I did my best, and along the way, I began interacting with a couple of new-to-me deities, including Serqet (Who I prayed to) and Ma’ahes (Who insisted on my attention). I also met Nebt-het, Set, the Jackals (Wepwawet and Yinepu/Anubis), and Twtw. I acquired a hoard of historical books and read some of them, and I practiced integrating pieces of Kemetic ritual, heka, and prayers. Sekhmet was quiet, giving me the space to explore and interact with other Netjeru without being so close that I couldn’t see anyone past Her.

After the beginner course ended, I became a Remetj, a friend of the faith. And I signed up for the Rite of Parent Divination, a geomantic rite of passage that would reveal the Parent(s) of my soul and the Beloved(s) Who watched over me in this lifetime. (Note: This is a modern rite specific to Kemetic Orthodoxy, and it is not required of any Kemetic, nor does it limit which deities a person can interact with or worship.) I was exhilarated, nerve-wracked, and convinced that Sekhmet would not show up in the divination… while simultaneously not-so-secretly wondering if She would appear as my Mother. I swore to Her that, no matter Her place in or outside of that divination, She would not lose Her importance in my life and practice.

She was not there. I was divined a child of Nebt-het and Hethert-Nut, beloved of Ma’ahes and Serqet. I was overjoyed and stunned. And it took me months and months to come to grips with Sekhmet’s absence in my divination, against all odds of logic, my own promise, and the simple fact that the divination is not the be-all end-all of anything. Even as I struggled between intellect and emotion, I created a relationship with my akhu, the blessed dead who are my ancestors, and grew closer to the four Netjeru Who were in my divination.

A little over a year after my divination, I had settled in: with my gods, with my akhu, and with my community. I had proven to myself that I could participate with and bring value to the people I came to admire and enjoy, and that I could devote myself to many gods without enormous conflict. And so I felt I was ready to take Shemsu vows and become a “follower” of Kemetic Orthodoxy, swearing myself to my Netjeru and my community. I received a Kemetic name when I took those vows in February of this year, alongside my sister.

And now? Now, I am committed to my gods and Their people, to upholding ma’at in my life and self, and to maintaining this blog and my physical shrine as devotional works. I am at peace in my religion, with my spirituality; it is a dynamic, living, growing, evolving peace, and I am glad to walk this path.

If you enjoyed this post, please check out the other how-we-got-Kemetic stories by my fellow Round Table bloggers!

I intend for this to be a beautifully short, straight-forward post.

Logic and religion are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are best when hand-in-hand, supporting each other. While you can certainly have logic without religion, I would never recommend having religion without logic: it’s a dangerously imbalanced equation.

Logic helps a religionist function as a discerning, responsible person, both individually and within society as a whole. (It also helps them make up cool words like “religionist.”) Logic helps a religionist understand what is objectively factual and what is subjective experience, and logic helps a religionist accept and engage with questions, doubts, and debates in a level-headed, rational manner.

And religion—or spirituality, if you prefer that term—helps logicals remember that there is magic, meaning, and divinity in the world. Religion-slash-spirituality helps logicals survive and thrive in an unpredictable, chaotic, uncanny reality where not everything is, well, logical and sensical. Religion-slash-spirituality helps logicals exist beyond the physical senses and mundane routines so they can touch the numinous and remember that the Universe-sized picture is more than what they can see right now.

Logic and religion are bedfellows, best friends, and PB&J. Science, logic’s bro, is the foundation of some seriously amazing shit (and is the basis of my own spiritual practice); religion-slash-spirituality lends an even deeper, more breath-taking meaning to all of the bedazzling natural phenomena that we learn is measurably real.

Religionists, be logical, savvy, questioning, discerning, rational, responsible people. Logicals, be awe-filled, sensory, questioning, experiential, enthralled, daring people.

Or, better yet, be all of the above. :)

Necessary Disclaimer: Why yes, logicals can be awe-filled without being religious. For the sake of brevity, I have summed up, but I am by no means being exclusionary towards the many non-religious logicals who are absolutely filled with wonder for the world.

Last year’s first L post was on Lugh.

My refuge is My Eye, My protection is My Eye, My strength is My Eye, My power is My Eye. O southern, northern, western, and eastern gods, honor and fear Me. I go that I might bring justice, for it is with Me, and I will not be given over to the flame.