I’ve been quiet, I know – the onset of winter usually finds me drawing inwards and socializing less – but I’d like to make a concentrated effort to post more here. This isn’t a New Year’s resolution so much as an ongoing goal, a habit I’d like to ingrain into my weekly routine. I’m aiming for every Wednesday. I like Wednesday; it’s a good day.

To get back into the swing of things, I’ll share a few holiday anecdotes:

It took me hours to write up and send Moomas cards. My hand cramped by the end. But it brought me joy to send out these little pieces of me to my brothers and sisters, my Kemetic kin, and I look forward to doing it next year, too. (But I’ll try to start a week or so earlier…!)

I put up all the Moomas cards I received over our fireplace, carefully so we could still read the insides and see the outsides. Seeing them all brings me such happiness. I love my community.

I spent Christmas* week in Nevada, where my partner’s family is and where I’d lived for a couple years before we moved to Texas. We drove, my partner J and I, and our two dogs, and we stayed with Mama J. None of J’s family are very religious in any direction, but Christmas is a time for family and joy nonetheless. Being around people who loved and welcomed us, being able to exchange handcrafted gifts… it felt like a real Christmas for the first time in a while, and I am deeply grateful.

*Christmas, while a Christian holiday, is to me a cultural one. I do celebrate it as a secular holiday, similarly to Thanksgiving; I remove the religious and the materialistic trappings and focus on the cornerstones of family, love, and generosity. And warmth. My childhood Christmasses left deeply emotional and visceral memories, and I strive to recreate that wonder and love each new Christmas.

I did not do much in particular to mark the Solstice, either to celebrate the reborn sun as a pagan or to welcome back the Eye as a Kemetic. I also didn’t do much to celebrate Moomas on the 25th, the Establishment of the Celestial Cow, despite lofty hopes of going back to last year’s Moomas post (which has gotten some link-love this year! ♥) and improving some of the translation quality… or practicing and recording a sharable version of the Moomas song I wrote last year… *sheepish*

I say this not because these holidays don’t matter to me, but because it’s important to acknowledge that, sometimes, I miss even really big days. I love my winter holidays, more dearly than most any others, but this year, being in the presence of my loved ones was enough celebration for me. (Even if I feel I really ought to have done more!)

I hope you’ve all had a blessed holiday season, and I look forward to catching up with everyone in the coming days.

Welcome back, Eye of Ra, we cherish the warmth You return to us!

Hail Hethert-Nut, Celestial Cow, Who holds Ra aloft in the safety and peace of the stars!

Wesir’s green sigil lying on Nebt-het’s “pillow,” overseen by Nebt-het’s black bone ankh, Her sigil, Aset’s lighter sigil, and Yinepu’s onyx stone. Offerings: pure water, jasmine incense, hand-picked winter flowers from my yard, and a green tea candle.

We are in the middle of a five-day Kemetic holiday called the Mysteries of Wesir (Osiris). In short, it is an observance of Wesir’s death, the lamentation of the Netjeru Who love Him, and His emergence into the realm of the dead. It is one of the most foundational holidays to Kemetic Orthodoxy.

I have been formally Kemetic for only about a year and a half; I’ve been pagan for a decade. This celebration of death, especially timed at the seasons’ change, is very familiar to me. In some ways, my own cycles mirror the dying and hibernation of the world. But I hadn’t really celebrated the Mysteries before.

Last night, ideally, one would hold a six-hour vigil from midnight to dawn, with prayers and offerings on each hour; the experience of sitting in shrine is a loyal witness to Wesir’s loss and His transition into the Duat, the Unseen, the otherworld where the dead are. Hemet, Kemetic Orthodoxy founder, has written some beautiful words on the night-long vigil.

But I work a dayjob, and I could not last until dawn. So I compromised and chose a one-hour vigil from 11 pm to midnight.

No electronics. No food; no water. None of my sacred jewelry or accoutrements. Just me and death, stretched out in front of the fire in the hearth.

I had a tiny shrine set up: a purple seed-filled “pillow”, about the size of a palm, from Nebt-het’s shrine, on which rested the green sigil I painted for Wesir at Wep Ronpet, as though She laid Him in Her own bed to watch over Him. Standing vigil were Her black bone ankh and Yinepu’s onyx stone. And I had a bowl of clear, pure water set next to it all.

It was the water that gave me the insight I had been seeking, even though I didn’t know why I’d set it out at all, beyond listening to that wordless urge of “this should be done” that so often drives my offerings. I lay down on the floor, my chin on my hands, and I saw the firelight reflected in the water’s still surface perfectly.

I have been struggling to understand Wesir; how can a god be dead, yet still have human worshippers and devotees? How can He be as gone from us as gone can be, gone like my father’s father and my mother’s mother, and yet still bless us and speak with us?

The water was the answer. Just because the flames were not housed in the bowl into which I gazed did not mean that the flames did not exist and burn somewhere else, a little farther from me but still visible nonetheless.

Just because Wesir is dead does not mean we cannot reach Him; only that He is not in the same place as the living Netjeru, like the fire is not in the same place as the water, even though, to my eye, they appear to be.

I understand so much better now.

I wrote out the translations of the Lamentations of Aset and Nebt-het then, by hand; it took me most of the hour. I savored each line, following the story closely: They start by calling for Him to return, then reciting the things They have done to protect and re-establish Him, then end by welcoming Him as the god of the dead. When I was done, I read it aloud, quietly.

In the middle of this, almost exactly the middle of the hour, the fire went out. I’d gotten absorbed by my writing and hadn’t fed it quickly enough; I added a few smaller sticks, turned the gas back on to help relight it from the still-glowing embers, and waited.

Nothing.

Then, after a few long moments, it flared up spectacularly. I finished writing out the Lamentations by its flickering light.

Welcome back, Wesir.

I’ve been thinking about making a beaded necklace for my akhu for a while now. One night, a week or so back, I got the compulsion and started digging through my stock to see what felt right. All I knew is that I wanted beads of roughly the same size.

I wound up with no bead repeated, beads “the color of laughter,” and some of my most treasured: lapis lazuli and turquoise. There are beads for my mom’s fiancé’s heritage and an amethyst and a grey-black stone bead as a nod to Nebt-het and Yinepu, as well as glass, painted wood, various other stone beads, cloisonne, and tiger’s eye.

It had turned into a bracelet, with even the gold and silver of the magnetic clasp alternating. And I love it.

Dua akhu!

O Mistress of the Bow, Ruler of Arrows,
Nit the Great Who Opens the Way,
May You string Your bow with the Uncreated’s gut
and fletch Your arrows with the white feather of Ma’at!
Lay forth Your arrows into all isfet
and drive it bleeding from Your crashing shores!

O Eldest, O Mother and Father of all things,
praise and prayer and festival unto You!
You Who created all life and all gods,
Crocodile Nurse, Cow Mother, Creatrix,
blessed and beautiful are Your name and Your face!
Hail Nit, Mother of the Gods!

I have been lax in updating my prayerbook with the requests of my community and my family, so today, I carved out a block of time to catch up. I provided bread and drink, incense and fire, as offerings, and I washed my hands before I picked up book and pen.

I spent four straight hours, in the company of a diehard tealight, my gods, and my ancestors, writing out fourteen pages of prayers by hand. There is quite the stitch in my shoulders and back from the work.

What strikes me is not the physical discomfort, nor the tears I shed over the deaths I quietly recorded, but the perspective offered by being a silent witness to others’ troubles, fears, pains… and triumphs. There were remarkable and unexpected recoveries from illness and injury, just as there were worsening prognoses and deaths. There were jobs seized, along with jobs lost. Relationships and friendships forged and repaired, along with bonds broken.

And every moment, for every word I spelled out, for every prayer I scribed and spoke, I was reminded of how blessed I am, and how grateful I am for those asked and unasked-for blessings.

It’s hard to pray for others without gaining that perspective for myself. And for that, and a million other things, I am thankful.

22 OCTOBER – III Akhet 21: Feast of Shu, Day of Renenutet and Nit

Tonight, I offered incense to Shu, pure water and Celtic sea salt to Nit, and a piece of farmhouse bread to Renenutet. I lit a red candle for Nit on the left and a cream one for Renenutet on the right, and I gave Them thanks and admiration. Shu as the breath of the wind that I adore and that uplifts me, He Who upholds my Mother, Hethert-Nut; Nit as another Name for my Mother Nebt-het, Lady of the Deep Waters, He-She Creatrix; Renenutet as the Lady of the Harvest, Who protects our crops that we may have bread at all.

And then Deathcat decided to nest on my calves, leaning against the backs of my knees, as I knelt before my shrine.

So I stayed a little longer. And it was nice.

Dua Shu! Dua Nit! Dua Renenutet!

I know I’ve missed several PBP posts, and I will be writing and posting them when I can; in order to keep from falling further behind, I’m going to try to keep up with the “current” PBP letters and backdate as I’m able.

When one has more than one god, occasionally one runs into the problem of… well, rationing one’s time, energy, and offerings between Them. While I am only speaking for myself here, I imagine other pagans have run into this particular quandary, and I’d love to hear how you portion your attention to your gods!

Since late 2005, I’ve been following Sekhmet; my beginning relationship with Her was trepidatious, but over time, I became very attached and devoted to Her. From meeting Her up until the springtime of 2011, She was my only god. Sometimes She was barely present; sometimes I prayed to Her daily. A dear friend gave me a Sekhmet pendant, and it became daily wear for years; it was, and is, the easiest way for me to reach out to Her. I was a one-god pagan, and happily so.

But in 2011, I took the Kemetic Orthodoxy’s beginner course, and I began interacting with other Egyptian deities over the spring and summer. I met Set. I had rich, fleeting interactions with or impressions of Twtw, Renenutet, Ptah, Yinepu (Anubis). I prayed to Serqet, Our Lady of Poisons. Ma’ahes knocked on my door and met me outside at sunset. I met Nebt-het and bonded quickly with Her.

Summer cooled into fall. In November, I underwent the geomantic Rite of Parent Divination and found that my spiritual parents are Nebt-het and Hethert-Nut, my beloveds Ma’ahes and Serqet. I was both surprised and not surprised that Sekhmet was not present. As I began deepening my relationship with those four gods, I found myself spending more time with Set (thanks to my sister’s relationship with Him), too.

It has been a year since I met my Mother, Nebt-het; over a year since I began praying to Serqet, and just under a year since I met Ma’ahes. It has been almost seven full years since I began studying and worshipping Sekhmet.

And I find myself saturated with deities that I love and admire and wish to offer good things to, but no real hierarchy. In Kemetic Orthodoxy, one’s Parent(s) come(s) “first,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one has the closest relationship with Them, or that one spends the most time with Them, or that one even gives Them the most/nicest offerings. “First” is a very nebulous definition that I’m still seeking to explore for myself, especially since I am still emotionally closer to Ma’ahes and Serqet than my Mothers.

For all intents and purposes, I have five or six deities in my life on a consistent, long-term basis, and I have no particular hierarchy for Them. I have situations in which I call on one or another first; I have acts or objects I offer to one or the other first, based on what They like and appreciate. All my physical exercise and martial arts practice is an offering to Sekhmet; my keeping a prayerbook is a service in Nebt-het’s name. I call on Serqet when I need Her protection or on Hethert-Nut when I need comfort and love.

On occasion, it perplexes me, my lack of a primary god. So many pagans have patron or matron deities; so many of my Kemetic brethren have one Netjeru to Whom they are the closest. I struggled with “letting go” of Sekhmet as my only deity, even as She pushed me down this path that ascertained other gods would come into my life. Sometimes, out of habit, I will think of Her as my only, as my primary; but I wear jewelry for Nebt-het, Hethert-Nut, Ma’ahes, and Serqet on a daily or near-daily basis, and I do not forget that my life now includes Them, too.

Having been a person with a “matron deity,” if I can give Sekhmet that non-Kemetic label, I do occasionally miss the simplicity and purity of it. It has been a challenge to give what I deem fair amounts of attention and time to each of the gods Who are active in my life, even when only a couple at a time are standing at the forefront. But all in all, I adore each Netjeru I know, and I feel blessed by Their presence, gifts, and lessons in my life.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

A candle lit and thanks given to my Mother, Hethert-Nut, in Her name of Sky, in Her name of Space, in Her name of Galaxy.

We landed Curiosity on Mars. It has not killed any cats. Yet. It sent back pictures. People have wept and cheered and hugged and exulted in this success, and that was just in the first five minutes of its landing.

I am in love with this amazing, infinite universe we live in, and all the science that makes it possible and glorious and stunning, and all the heart that lets us revel in its wonder.

Dua Hethert-Nut!

At my (non-Kemetic) partner’s urging, I woke up very early this morning to find that he had made two snake-shaped sweet potato pancakes to be ceremonially slain and nommed destroyed. We did this last year, too – it symbolizes the Uncreated One, Ap-p (Apophis), being defeated and disempowered in the new year.

My partner said, and I quote, “Isfet has never tasted so good.” I laughed very hard at that, and agreed.

I lit a candle, said the sunrise prayer at, um, some time significantly later than sunrise, and painted my new altar shelf. I’d spent last night taking everything down, cleaning it, and reorganizing it, and while I am not 100% done (I’ll be adding another tiny shelf for Set, Heru-wer, and the Jackal soon), I’m very pleased with how the space works right now. New shrine pictures will come in a following post, once the paint on the shelf dries!

I also made a new year’s sigil for Nut/Hethert-Nut, Whose year this is. The pale blue central sigil is Balance; the corner golden one is Hope. And the stars are Hers.

Today is Nebt-het’s birthday, the last of the epagomenal days, five days that fall between the end of the Kemetic year and Wep Ronpet, the Kemetic New Year on August 3rd.

Hail to the Sister of Shadows,
She Who comforts the living
and guides the dead home.

May You bless this coming year
as You blessed Your brother, Wesir,
with Your long sight and Your steadfast protection.

Greyed violet as velvet and the dusk,
as multi-faceted as the changing moon,
Dua Nebt-het, Lady of the House!

A sigil for rest in Nebt-het’s honor.

Today is Aset’s birthday, the fourth of the epagomenal days, five days that fall between the end of the Kemetic year and Wep Ronpet, the Kemetic New Year on August 3rd.

Hail to the Shining Daughter of Stars,
radiant queen upon Her throne,
most devoted mother over Her children.

May You bless this coming year
as You blessed Your son with Your heka;
protect and balm this year as You did Him.

Pure blue as the field of the sunlit sky,
as clever as He Who won this day from the moon,
Dua Aset, Great of Magic!

In Aset’s honor, a sigil for fulfilling: rising to fill the space in which you choose to stand, and to fill the role you choose to take.

Today is Set’s birthday, the third of the epagomenal days, five days that fall between the end of the Kemetic year and Wep Ronpet, the Kemetic New Year on August 3rd.

Hail to the Progenitor of Chaos,
standing fearless at the sun’s prow
and forever slaying the Uncreated One.

May You bless this coming year
and guard it as You guard Ma’at
in brilliant, crackling, blazing fierceness.

Red as a firestorm behind dark smoke,
as powerful as the inexorable turning of the world,
Dua Set, Great of Strength!

In Set’s honor, a sigil for ferocity.