Commitment

Reblogged from Peaceful Awakenings: Reflections of Egypt:

It's easy to get tangled up in pointless angst, with this reconstruction thing.

Take something simple and basic: the sixth-day festival honoring the ancestors. It's mentioned from the Pyramid Texts through the Book of Going Forth By Day, ancestors are foundational to a sound Kemetic practice, go!

But...

... sixth day of what?

Parker has the sixth day of the lunar month named "śnt", in other words, sixth day, so clearly it's lunar, and falls the day before "dnỉt", "part-day, first quarter day", so the day before first quarter!

Read more… 617 more words

And, this is why I leave the calendar figuring to those who actually have the foo.

It’s a podcast!

I was invited to participate in the Divine Community podcast, along with Genevieve Wood, founder of FlameKeeping!  Take a listen, and find out what it’s all about!

Divine Community – What the Hell is a FlameKeeper?

Pop Culture Paganism

Reblogged from Adventures in Vanaheim:

Warning: This post is one of those posts, the ones that will probably piss some of you off.

I promised myself I would try not to jump on too many bandwagons, but, well, screw that, this is important.

Let me tell you a story....

A woman who posts on one of the fora where I lurk had been trying to get pregnant for a year without success.

Read more… 889 more words

Sometimes, *that* something works means more than *why* something works.

Divine Idiocy

We are all Divine – you, me, the rock, the tree, my left shoe (especially), and that piece of fnerd (carpet fuzz) by the couch.  This means that our very being has an impact on the Universe, even if we cannot see it.  We take that aspect of being and funnel it into action…and that action can be directed toward the overall growth and improvement of the Divine.  Of course, it can also be directed the other way.

Now, I’ll admit that I cannot fathom the action or intent of a piece of carpet fuzz…but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.  It simply means that I’m unable to see the effects caused by the action of something I pull out of my cat’s mouth on a regular basis.  Of course, being eaten by the cat could be the master plan of said fuzz…and then I start wondering if I am hindering its goal or helping it improve and realize I’m caught up in weird brain circles again.

Funnily enough, the idea that a piece of fuzz might have motivations toward improvement that I cannot see helps me deal with the idiocy I see on a routine basis.

(I’m using the definition from Oxford Dictionaries.com: idiocy – extremely stupid behavior)

My husband and I had an interaction with our neighbor at the start of this week that started with our neighbor storming onto our porch to complain that we had cars parked along the street.  It became a heated verbal altercation and ended with my husband injured and my screaming about the neighbor getting off my “fucking property” and my calling “the fucking cops”.  He did, and I did, and a lovely policeman from our township came out, talked to all the involved parties, and basically told us all to stay away from one another.  What he said amounted to “Don’t talk to each other, and don’t go on each other’s property”…and this is easy for us, because I can think of 157 things we’d rather do that set foot in his yard.

(Before you ask, no – we do not think the neighbor actually laid a hand on my husband to cause the tripping that caused the fall down the porch steps and its sequellae.)

Now, there are a number of factors to consider when looking at this situation…especially since I’m effectively using the altercation as an example of Divine Idiocy:

1. Street parking is allowed in our neighborhood.  There are no permits required – anyone can park anywhere, as long as no driveways are blocked.
2. Our pattern of parking, if said neighbor was watching things as he claimed, is that we park on the street when something else is taking up (or going to take up) the driveway – dumpsters; U-Haul trucks; heavy machinery.
3. Conversational etiquette does not usually involve storming onto someone’s porch to scream obscenities with no apparent provocation.
4. I do think he had a legitimate question to ask of us when he came onto the porch: “Would you please move your van?  It is parked in my usual space.”  This was never communicated to us in his rant of parking and driveways and cars to be towed and fuck this and fuck that, you fucking bitch…which is what led my husband to step out onto the porch to speak with the guy.
5. The whole thing could have been avoided if he’d been civil…
6. …but it also could have been avoided if I’d moved our van back into the driveway after I got my car out.  Or, when I got back from dropping off my father, instead of deciding to wait until I was going back out again.
7. My husband mentioned to me when I first came home that I should probably move the van…and I responded that I would do it when I went back out.

In other words, I put my own convenience first and an altercation occurred.  Whether the result was direct or indirect I really cannot say; the rant could have occurred whether I’d parked there or not.  Maybe he was ticked that I was in his parking space.  Maybe he was concerned about our neighbors having room to park.  Maybe he thinks too many cars parked on the street affect traffic patterns.  Or, maybe he’s just an asshole.  Things were set in motion and ended with the police being called and the issue being officially documented…and I’ll never know his true motivation.  But really, overall, it doesn’t matter.  The only thing I can do is continue to interact with other parts of the Divine in ways that promote growth rather than stagnancy.

It’s hard to say from whom the Divine Idiocy comes here…but it isn’t hard to recognize what I need to do about it.

Ibis logic

Threskiornis aethiopicus, the African Sacred Ibis, is a bird worth examining.

Although regionally extinct in Egypt (isn’t it weird how so many of Egypt’s sacred animals are now threatened or gone from that country?), it can be found throughout the continent of Africa and has been introduced to several other areas, including France, Spain, Bahrain and, more recently, southern Florida.  Outside of its native habitat, the African Sacred Ibis is an invasive species…not unlike some Kemetics I know.  But, I digress.

Here’s a photo of this beautiful bird, on whom Djehwty’s image is based (or in Djehwty’s image was created, depending on to whom you listen):

From their behavior, T. aethiopicus and other ibises appear  to be interested in only a few things – acquiring and eating food; mating and raising young; living with and arguing with members of their own species.  I’ve been told by ornithologists that this is because birds in general see things in terms of “bird/not-bird”.  If something is a not-bird, it then gets categorized as food, predator (scary thing!), or not worthy of attention.

(This is also not unlike some Kemetics I know.)

This is ibis logic – if it can’t be eaten, or fucked, then it must be other.  If it is other, it must be run from or ignored.  And those of us who think in and live by these terms are examples of how it may work for ibises, but it doesn’t work for human beings.

When everything that is other is seen as either scary or not worth examining, we stagnate.  We end up living in comfortable little ruts surrounded by our own self-importance and flawed reasoning…and no one can tell us otherwise because we surround ourselves with others of like-mind.  Hell, even if one of those others did try to talk to us, or ask us questions, or give us another point of view, it wouldn’t matter because we’d either run or dismiss it.  And…have I mentioned that stagnancy doesn’t lead to the upholding of ma’at?  Ma’at, like isfet, is fluid…and if we’re unable to accept fluidity and change, to recognize that even in the other is room for learning and growth, then how can we claim to work for it?

If we’re living by ibis logic, we can’t.

Hard things are Hard

There’s something to be said for throwing yourself into difficult situations.  For me, it’s usually “Why the fuck am I doing this?”

I seem to be moving away from the simple once-and-done acts of life and into more complicated things that tie me up in knots and make me slog through them one brain cell at a time.  You can see some of this in my blog entries this year – Passing through the Gates is a recent example.  I’m doing (or trying to do) this work to get somewhere further along my religious path and it is taking more and more energy and brain power and understanding to move anywhere.  I keep getting mired down in a swamp of “Why is this so HARD?”

<insert appropriate whiny voice here>

Now, I could insert some lovely platitudes about difficult things being the most worth doing…or quotes from The Little Engine that Could…or some other wordy crap meant to reassure and promote the idea that success will eventually happen.  But, that’s bullshit and soft-soap and, quite frankly, I think you all are more intelligent than that.  I don’t want to palm you off  with something worthy of a sampler or  motivational poster.  The honest truth is that, in everyone’s life some things are easy and some things are not…and everyone gets to choose for themselves whether they want to attack the difficult things.

So, maybe the question isn’t “Why is this so hard?” but “Why am I choosing to work on the hard stuff?”  Or, maybe the question is, “Since I am choosing to work on this difficult thing, why am I whining about it?”

The latter question is easy to answer – I whine because I (usually) get some empathy from my friends/religious community members who are also working on difficult things and the feedback from them makes me feel like I’m not alone.  Shared experience seems to be a bonding (bondage?) point between humans, and bonding over doing incredibly hard shit is rewarding.

As for why I choose to work on the difficult, well, there are a lot of factors involved but it basically boils down to wanting to improve and grow rather than stagnate and there’s no way that I’ve found to do that while only focusing on easy things.  If I want to become more, if I want to be who I truly am,  I have to engage in things that push my boundaries.  I benefit from this, as does everything to which I am connected.

We are all Divine, and our actions have benefits and consequences for the Universe at large.  It therefore behooves us to engage in ways that push our growth forward and make us more.

Writing Prompts:

1. Do you seek out the difficult?  Why or why not?
2. What are you avoiding because it seems too hard?  What might help you engage it?

What the Heka?

I don’t know if it’s the time of year, or what, but I keep coming across questions about what heka is, and how to do it, and if it is real.  What does that even mean, is heka real?  I mean, are you real?  Is that tree in the backyard real?  Are my shoes real? Does objective reality really exist?

(Five points to anyone who gets the last statement, gentle reader.)

In all seriousness, I can’t give an answer to whether heka is real…but I can tell you what it is.  Funnily enough, it stems from one point I keep making over and over and over again.  Say it with me now – words mean things.

See?  I knew you could do it!

Words mean things is the foundation of heka. Now, I could pull 50 definitions out of scholarly texts and…wait.  Actually, let me start there:

Heka

• “…the energy of life itself… – Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods; Meeks and Favard-Meeks
• “The Egyptian word usually translated as ‘magic’ is heka…All deities and lesser supernatural beings, including the forces of chaos, had their own heka.  It was considered as much a part of them as their bodies or their names…” – Magic in Ancient Egypt; Pinch.
• “Magic, effective speech.  It is written with the twisted rope H and the symbol of the ka…” – The Traveller’s Guide to the Duat; Nicoll.

I once had a discussion with a friend  and she gave me some imagery that really helped to nail down heka for me – if we think of he- as the sound of an exhale, then heka is the act of breathing life into the ka to shape it.   Since I tend to work from the idea that words have intrinsic meaning and application from external sources can shape that meaning in another fashion…well, you can see why it appeals so much.

So, heka.  Well, take a series of words with intrinsic meaning and examine them closely.  Arrange them in a way that supports your desired outcome.  Double check them to make sure what you’ve laid out will actually work in the way you envision, take a deep breath and make it so.

Repeat as necessary.