December 7, 2009

After the snowfall

Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:12 am by

In my last post I was talking about the darkness of winter — and then the day after that was dazzling, brilliant with sun on the half-melted, lacy snow crust and on the jewels of ice and wet snow clinging to the trees, the road shining white with salt and the sky a crystalline, piercing blue. Winter is the darkest time, but in some moments it can also be the brightest as Set, the Lord of Storms, passes through and then departs, trailing a glorious, transfigured beauty in His wake. Without the storm, we’d never see this radiant and transformed world; without His rivalry with Set, Heru would never be a true king, tested and tempered. So honor Set for His wild strength that shakes the sky; honor Heru Who arises in splendor.

Dua Set! Dua Heru! Nekhtet!

October 15, 2009

Glimpses

Posted in Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 4:53 pm by

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.

October 13, 2009

Seeing anew

Posted in Being Kemetic, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:31 pm by

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!

October 7, 2009

Everything praises itself

Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 3:00 pm by

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!

September 17, 2009

What I want

Posted in Stalking Beauty, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:37 pm by

Wep Ronpet is well past, and the season of the Inundation is underway. The golden rain trees around the fountain plaza are starting to turn, shedding their first delicate yellow leaves, living up to their name. This morning was wrapped in gray, a promise of drizzle, a heavy overcast that intensified even the smallest spots of color: blue chicory by the roadside, a fiery clump of tickseed sunflowers, one prematurely red maple branch. The rumor of autumn is in the wind, breath of coolness and change, ready to sweep everything clean before it, opening the way for all possibility.

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time caught up in a looping pattern of anxiety, one of the most frequent manifestations of which has been a circular inner monologue: “I want something. What do I want? I don’t know what I want! But I want something….” This week I was finally able to put on the brakes by means of a very simple, basic affirmation technique: taking the negative statement at the heart of that distress, turning it into a positive one, and repeating it with intention, like a mantra.

I know what I want.
I know what I want.
I know what I want.

And the answers came.

I want to be strong.
What does it mean to be strong?
To be whole and sound. To be effective in the world.

I want to move through life with grace.
What does it mean to be graceful?
To be centered in myself. To be conscious, as I move, of my relationship with all that’s around me.

I want to live in beauty.
What does it mean to live in beauty?
To be aware. To discover richness and sweetness with all of my senses, every day, everywhere. To choose always the beautiful and the true.

I want to create beauty.
What does it mean to create beauty?
To use all my talents to write, to sing, to make things that are lovely and satisfying. To “share your lapis,” as I was told once in an inner journey. To make the world a little brighter, to make life a little easier and happier for everyone around me. To reflect all of the beauty that I see and experience and imagine.

Everything else? All the passing flickers of interests, obsessions, the one-true-goals, the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-times? It’s all window dressing, all veils and curtains, all outward forms that come and go. The essence is what’s deep and true. So if I can stay with and follow that essence, and worry less about the particulars, then I’ll find my way out of that endless loop at last.

– –

And then, having realized that, today I went out for a walk at lunchtime and sat for a while on a set of abandoned steps, watching the cloud-blown sky. And all at once the next key came to me: part of the urgency that lies behind my anxiety is this feeling I sometimes get of being filled with a tremendous energy and having no idea what to do with it. There’s a desperation to find something big and important and most of all right, the perfect thing that I’m “meant” to do, at which I can hurl all of this gathered tension and force. (Thus the almost frantic need to answer that question of “what do I want,” to find some kind — any kind — of direction and purpose.) And what the wind and my Mother told me is — that it’s all right to hold this energy. To contain it, as the bas jar contains the secret of its perfume. And to let it find its own expression when it’s needed, when I can see what it’s really good for — as not a single outpouring flood but a thousand subtle uses, the virtue of a thousand different resins and flowers.

Two hawks swept by overhead, flying against the wind, and the sun came out.

Dua Bast! Dua Heru-hekenu! Nekhtet!

July 31, 2009

Shadow and shining

Posted in Stalking Beauty, The Wild Sky at 3:26 pm by

Driving through the tail end of rain storms, the last couple of days — the road was silver, and the delicate veils of water thrown up by the passing cars, and the light-struck sky, and the trees were like shadows, half seen in the mist. The Kemetic year is ending in stress, but also in beauty.

The flood time is coming; may it wash away all sorrow; may we be renewed.

Dua Netjer! Nekhtet!

June 18, 2009

Following the heart

Posted in Being Kemetic, Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections at 8:01 am by

Some time ago, in the throes of one of my periodic attacks of “What should I do with my life?!” I was sitting before Amun-Ra’s shrine. And I asked Him, “What is ma’at?” (i.e., what would be the right path for me to follow).

Go and ask your Mother, He said, adding, almost as an afterthought, Ma’at is to follow the heart.

Last weekend, I was reading from Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: The Late Period, and I came across the following lines, in the statue inscription of Nebneteru:

Happy is he who spends his life
In following his heart with the blessings of Amun!

In the footnotes, Lichtheim comments:

This sentence sums up the Egyptian concept of the good and blessed life. “Following the heart” (shemsu-ib) is to make the best and fullest use of what life holds: it is being active, generous, and joyful.

And I realized that I had completely misunderstood what Amun-Ra had meant by following the heart. I had thought that I should listen to the aches and pangs, that I should take the prickings of anxiety as a message, a warning, a prod to get me moving toward some other, “better” life…when instead ma’at is to listen to and to dwell in the heart’s joy in each moment. To live, to give, to create, to be open to all the good that is.

And of course, my Mother, Bast, is the Mistress of Joy.

May Bast guide my heart in its dance; may She open my eyes to the beauty everywhere around me; may She bless all that I touch and every word I speak.

Dua Netjer! Dua Bast!

June 13, 2009

Amun of the clouds

Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 8:38 am by

Driving home from work last evening, I was looking at the cumulus clouds piling high in the western sky, and they made me think of Amun — not Amun as the clouds themselves, but as the invisible wind that sculpts them into forms of exquisite beauty, the same force that lifts the heart, that inspires us to create beauty of our own.

O beautiful of plumes — dua Amun!

March 30, 2009

Hunting for flowers

Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty at 3:47 pm by

Starting a new effort to post daily, even if it’s just a few lines….

I finally got caught up at work, and it was a beautiful day, so I went hunting for flowers on my lunch break. And boy did I find them! Winter aconite and spring beauty, daffodils and periwinkle, magnolia and forsythia and some shrub with small, pale, drooping flowers that I couldn’t identify but that smelled amazing. And it’s still not quite April! Dua Netjer, nekhtet!

Offered blue hyacinths and white chocolate with vanilla to Bast in shrine last night, in the midst of the fierce thunderstorm that blew through at sunset. I guess this is our end of the Midwest snow storms. I didn’t realize it until this morning, but yesterday and today are a festival of Set, so I think I’ll make him an offering tonight as well.