10.23.09
Posted in Friday Findings at 12:11 pm by Shefyt
This is an interesting piece. The museum’s Web page says that it’s a triad including Bast, while the label in the photo calls it “Seated Figures of Bast.” Is it Bast and two other lionness-headed Goddesses? And if so, who are They? Or is it supposed to be three different manifestations of Bast? Or, since three in Kemetic thought is the number of indefinite multiplicity, was this piece intended to signify Bast in all Her forms? Mysteries, mysteries….
(Click the image to go to the museum’s site, where you can view a larger version of the photo.)
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10.22.09
Posted in The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 12:21 pm by Shefyt
Last evening, driving home, was an evening of layers: blue sky high above great sheets of sun-and-shadow clouds; the late golden light cutting across the air to ignite the treetops, turning them into brassy many-colored fires, or striking lower, between them, to burn on houses, grass, cars; the transitioning leaves in all their autumn hues overlapping like feathers; and, most keen of all, my own awareness of existing on multiple levels, of making the everyday drive, part of the New Jersey routine of commuters, and at the same time being with the sky, and also every place in between, breathing between earth and heaven, like Shu.
This morning I got up early to offer to Heru-hekenu on His feast day: flame, cool water, a little Florida water for scent, and teriyaki chicken. His message to me in return was very simple: Fly.
What does it mean to fly? I won’t ever suddenly sprout wings, except perhaps in dreams. But even while my feet are on the ground (or the gas pedal), I can still soar.
What sets your spirit flying?
Dua Heru-hekenu! Nekhtet!
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10.19.09
Posted in Home and Temple, On Writing, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 4:43 pm by Shefyt
On Sunday I went for a walk down the road and around the school, the first time in a long while that I’ve taken that particular walk. I often go for similar walks on my lunch break at work, around the university campus, down by the lake or along the canal, but they don’t have the sense of exhilaration that yesterday’s walk did. Was it something in the wind? Or was it because it was that wind, gusting down the length of the valley, that sky arching overhead, from hillside to hillside, that roll of the land and the rivers, the scattering of orange leaves like a drift of fire on the hill leading up to the cow farm’s main house, the pines along the athletic fields swaying against the ragged and illuminated clouds? Because it felt like coming home?
I’d never even realized that I’d been away, and yet, in some sense, I was. And is it a coincidence that I also spent much of the day writing, something that I’d been too busy or too anxious to do for a long time? There are a lot of distractions, a lot of ways to be absent to one’s self and one’s life.
O Netjer, may I be truly present. May I live. May I live.
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10.15.09
Posted in Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 4:53 pm by Shefyt
Today on the drive to work my eye was caught by one of those maples that turn palest peach in the fall — just a glimpse, its leaves in the early morning half light like faint candle flames, luminous and hazy in the shadows beneath the taller trees. Soon their color will shift, soon the mornings will get darker, soon the leaves will fall entirely. It’s a reminder to treasure every moment of beauty as it comes.
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10.14.09
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections at 12:13 pm by Shefyt
Sitting in shrine this morning, I found myself fascinated by the candle — the flame utterly still, seeming to float upon a pool of deep blue wax. It made me think of Isheru, the lake where the Eye of Ra is cooled and purified after Her raging. A perfect, timeless hush, the fire resting on the water, at peace yet holding the potential for action — a sustained note of tension held in containment and thus in exquisite balance.
May I be pure as well, O Eye of Ra.
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10.13.09
Posted in Being Kemetic, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:31 pm by Shefyt
It was a good weekend — a friend and fellow Kemetic priest came to visit, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and also simply spent time together talking about our practices. On Sunday, after the grocery shopping, I usually make offerings to my Beloveds, the God of the Year (currently Djehuty), and my Akhu; he sat in on that with me, and we added an offering for his Mothers, Nebt-het and Serqet. I’m used to doing offerings by myself, and it was an interesting and pleasant experience to be able to share that with someone. I think that there’s a lot we can learn, too, from watching and participating in each other’s rituals. Even if we’re working within the same basic framework, everyone brings their own touch, their own emphasis, their own poetry of gestures, words, and silences.
Another gray, cool day, a chill in the air that says autumn is here in earnest. It occurred to me just the other day that the colors of my state shrine — flame orange for the naos cabinet, shades of green and brown-gold for the curtained backdrop — echo the colors of this transition time, when the trees are just starting to catch fire. If you had asked me, once upon a time, what my least favorite color combination was, the answer would have been orange and green. It made me think of lurid fashion, of acidic day-glo and neon. And yet at Bast’s inspiration it’s become a thing of beauty for me. Now I see it with new eyes, a vision of fire and life and burning; now I associate it with the season that I love.
Tomorrow the House of Netjer will be holding an online oracle of Amun for its membership. I’ve been trying to think if I have anything to ask the God. Everything that’s unresolved for me right now is internal, not a question of “what should I do” or “what do I need to know” but of learning to be still with who I am and to see what’s truly around me. The secret of learning patience is to be patient.
O Amun, O Hidden One, may You help me to see what’s hidden from my view.
Dua Amun! Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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10.12.09
Posted in Tending the Shrine, Thoughts and Reflections at 2:45 pm by Shefyt
Sometimes when life seems too busy, when it seems as though there’s so much to do and so few hours in which to do it, this anxious and rebellious small voice pipes up to protest spending time in shrine. So it was at the end of last week. I was sitting before Bast’s icon, having just come to grips with the fact that I’ve been letting resistance get the better of me lately and that I need to put more conscious effort into all the many facets of tending the shrine. Somewhat plaintively, that inner voice blurted out, “Does that mean I’m supposed to live my life in the shrine?”
No, Bast replied.
Live your life from here.
Begin it here and end it here.
Trust a God to turn your perspective sideways. Consider the difference between spirituality that takes the place of day-to-day life and spirituality as a ground and context from which that life arises, between ritual as obligation and burden, something that consumes you, and ritual as source of renewal, that which gives life and energy, and as a source of rest. Like a home that you go out from every day and to which you return, again and again…that’s the distinction I need to embrace, as a palliative against that resistance, which ultimately arises from nothing more than a mind clouded by tension and fear.
So for the present I have a new practice, where every day I go to my shrine as the first thing when I get up and as the last thing before I go to bed. It only needs to be for a few moments, just long enough to calm myself, to remind myself, to center myself by touching that wellspring of life. We’ll see what comes of it.
Dua Netjer! Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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10.07.09
Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 3:00 pm by Shefyt
I went out for a walk along the canal today — a perfect windy autumn day, leaves flying, the sunlight glittering from a thousand ripples on the riffling water, a day that was made for joy. And as I walked, I began to pray to Heru-hekenu: “May You lift me up. May You lift me above fear, above depression, above anxiety, above anger — may You lift me on Your shining wings as You soar toward the sky, singing the praises of Netjer, Your beautiful fragrance pouring down onto the world.”
Netjer praising Netjer? came the response, soft and subtle.
“Everything,” a pause as the thought unfolds, “…praises itself.”
And then an impression like a slow, quiet smile. True.
So praise yourself today, as the tree revels in the arch of its branches, as the drifting clouds sing the glory of water and air, as Netjer loves and honors Itself — praise yourself as a child of God, beautiful and beloved. Even if something within you refuses believe it, say the words anyway. Words have power — what you speak moves that much closer to reality.
I praise myself as a singer of songs for Netjer, as a dreamer, as a good friend, as a lover of cats, as one who serves with joy. I praise the legs that carry me, the hands that do Netjer’s work, the senses that perceive, and the mind that remembers, draws connections, and invents. I praise the lungs that breathe and the heart that beats, giving me life. I praise all my hopes and longings, all my strivings and surrenders, and all the possibilities hidden within me that are yet to be born.
Dua Heru of Praises! Nekhtet!
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10.05.09
Posted in Netjeru, Parks and Rivers at 8:04 am by Shefyt
Last week I walked up to Marquand Park one day at lunch, to visit its threadleaf Japanese maple tree. It’s my favorite tree in the park, decked in patches of moss and lichen fans, with its wriggling gray branches twisting and turning intricately upon themselves until they erupt into radiating domes of leaves as fine and soft as grass. Standing beneath it is like being inside a hill of air and branches, looking up through the shelter of a sheer, living veil to catch fragmentary glimpses of sky.
Maybe that’s why it’s the place I go to when I want to feel close to Geb. Beneath my feet, there’s the soil, rain-moist, black, and crumbled, and the lush yet delicate grasses that grow in that green shade; beneath my hands, the springy coils of the tree’s limbs catch and shift with the rising wind; above my head, the arch of the tree echoes and yearns for the arch of heaven. A verdant place at the heart of the cosmos, where earth and air and sky all meet in vibrant life, sometimes moving, sometimes still, always at peace.
And Father Earth smiles, wordless presence, unfathomable and comforting as the ground that supports me, that cradles me — and Bast my Mother twines Herself through the branches above and behind me, a flicker of stirring breeze through my hair, the warmth of Her regard like a silent purr.
In thanks, I give energy back to the tree, with a prayer for its old and fragile branches to survive the winter’s snow and ice:
May you be strong to endure the wind and the coming winter.
May you be flexible to dance with the storms.
May you live. May you live. May you live.
And as I open my eyes, a bright lance of sun dazzles me, great Ra reaching down through the trees, through the leaves to touch my face.
Dua Netjer! Dua Geb! Nekhtet!
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