{"id":1185,"date":"2013-07-17T11:22:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T16:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2013-07-13T13:37:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T18:37:12","slug":"historical-heka-modern-heka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/magic\/historical-heka-modern-heka\/","title":{"rendered":"historical heka, modern heka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going through Faulkner’s translation of the Coffin Texts, I’m finding some gems.<\/p>\n

Spell 470: “I have appeared as Pakhet the Great, whose eyes are keen and whose claws are sharp, the lioness who sees and catches by night. … I find Orion standing on the path with the staff in his hand, and I set up the staff and receive it, and I am a god by means of it.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Spell 471, written on a man’s coffin: “A man has power through his magic. I have stood up as a holy woman, I have sat down as […] the sky, because you know my magic which I take to the sky.”<\/i><\/p>\n

These make me gleeful, because I am nerdy and queer, and I like finding obscure lioness Netjeru and references to men standing up as women. This is a big part of this soft-recon \/ researchy-revivalism path that appeals to me—I like finding others’ words and integrating them into myself and my worldview. I nom language, and it nourishes me. I feel connected when I can read or hear something from a different time, culture, or just a different person and understand it, grok it, digest it, use it.<\/p>\n

But I don’t live entirely off others’ words. I am a writer, too. I write my own heka, some shared publicly<\/a>, some still private. My tone of voice when writing heka is based on the historical sources I’ve read, and that tone evokes a particular feeling that helps me remember that it’s heka, not just journaling or pondering or wishing. For example, check the difference between “My eyes are the eyes of Nebt-het” and “I have Nebt-het’s eyes.” Both are entirely valid!… but one feels more like heka to me than the other.<\/p>\n

(Of course, this is all from a strictly English view. I can’t read Middle Egyptian (yet?), so I can only speak to the language in which I am fluent and in which I do most of my verbal thinking and discourse.)<\/p>\n

Finding and using historical heka, and writing and using my own, is a balancing act for me. While some Kemetics may prefer one source over the other, I really enjoy having a blend of ancient heka that resonates with me and heka I create for myself. So I write heka and prayers in a paper journal multiple times a week, and I peruse the Coffin Texts, seeking both style and inspiration from ancient voices filtered through the pages.<\/p>\n

“. . . his pen is a wand which lets him surpass; he will perform deeds and achieve governance – so says Osiris of [name]. One who has recourse to the storm, with protection in his hand . . .”<\/i><\/p>\n

(Spell 665, CT.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going through Faulkner’s translation of the Coffin Texts, I’m finding some gems. Spell 470: “I have appeared as Pakhet the Great, whose eyes are keen and whose claws are sharp, the lioness who sees and catches by night. … I find Orion standing on the path with the staff in his hand, and I set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}