January 22, 2012
Posted in Netjeru, Pagan Blog Project 2012, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:00 pm
by Shefyt
I debated whether I should do a PBP post on Bast. For one thing, this blog is already largely about my relationship with Her and my experiences as Her priest. For another, Bast is so multifaceted for me that I could probably write a whole book just on Her. But since She is so central to my religious practice, it seemed inescapable that I should write something about Her. So last night, while I was in the shrine, I asked for Her guidance on how to focus this piece.
Bast who lives in the heart.
So. Picture the heart as a flower, a rose, fragrant and lovely. Trace the inner curves of its petals, winding deeper into their labyrinth, traveling in your mind toward its center as the flower slowly unfolds and unfolds, opening ever further, layer after layer of sensuous richness, seemingly endless. Until at last you find, at the very center, the darkness of the deepest night, velvet black, a place of perfect peace and stillness. And as you rest in that darkness, eventually there is a flicker of gold, of flame, two golden eyes growing larger, coming closer, the gold of the Great Lioness emerging from the night like sunrise. Until you are washed in gold, the light of the sun filling you, widening your heart until that light spills over and shines out from you. Breathe out the golden light of the sun, illuminating the world. Breathe out the fragrance of the heart, delighting the Gods. Breathe in the love of Bast that makes the soul tremble and sing. Breathe in the beauty that feeds the ka.
For Bast is the Mistress of Joy, and joy dwells within the heart. The ancient Kemetic word for joy was in fact awt-ib, “the widening of the heart”; a close friend was called “one who has entered the heart.” For the people of Kemet, the heart was the seat of intelligence, emotion, inner mind, and soul. It is in the heart that we remember, that we feel love and loss and delight — and the pricking claws of conscience when we step outside ma’at. In all of these, Bast is there.
O Bast, Beautiful Lady, may You open our hearts to joy. Your perfume comes to me, O Bast. May my perfume go to You.
Dua Bast — nekhtet!
An amulet composed of the hieroglyphs for awt-ib, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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December 28, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:22 pm
by Shefyt
This morning, sitting in shrine with Bast, I saw an image of a small tree with gnarled, twisting branches, deep, velvety-brown bark, and clusters of large, lovely white flowers. And I heard, in that soft inner voice, Would you cut the tree down just because it doesn’t grow the way you want it to?
I have a chronic tendency to want to throw everything away and start over. For many years I wanted to leave my job and go back to college, “do it right” this time, broaden my horizons, take classes in a multitude of subjects, without limiting myself to a single major. More recently, it’s manifested as a nearly frantic impulse to purge almost all of my possessions, including the house, move away someplace, and reinvent myself.
Not very practical, is it? And also, it assumes an irreparable wrongness in the way things are at present. Maybe if my life were truly toxic, if I was in an abusive relationship, or sunk in addiction, failed dreams, or despair, razing everything to the ground might be productive. But it isn’t, and I’m not. Instead, I’m truly blessed in so many ways. And if there are places that aren’t perfect, if my life in general doesn’t fit some imagined idea of perfection — so what? Finally, with a little nudge from my Mother, I think I’m okay with that.
No, I wouldn’t cut the tree down. It’s beautiful just as it is. The lean of the trunk, the jutting branches tell a story of growth and change, of the interplay of yielding and strength; the luminous flowers float like clouds against the sky. There may be room for a little judicious pruning, with love and respect for the tree’s integrity. But always in service to what’s already there. To do otherwise is to deny myself and all that’s created me as the person I am today.
Every day is Zep Tepi, the First Time of Creation. And yet, every day we start where we are. We are new, we are renewed, and we are ongoing, all at once.
Dua Kheperu! May I become.
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December 27, 2011
Posted in Home and Temple, Tending the Shrine, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:28 pm
by Shefyt
I’m a little bit tired today; it was a slow, rough, frustrating day at work. Fortunately my festival calendar is clear until the end of the week. Or perhaps not so fortunately after all. Some festivity might rejuvenate me. Well, instead here I sit with a peppermint hot chocolate and two sleeping cats being ridiculously adorable as I try to put some words together in meaningful patterns. There are much worse ways to spend a rainy evening.
I’ve put in my request to be reinstated as a W’ab priest of the House of Netjer, and while I wait for official confirmation I’ve been continuing to sit with my thoughts and feelings about the job, as well as with my goals and priorities for my life in general. I think I’ve finally managed to set aside the pages-long list of things I think I want to do, or should do, or that might be cool to do if twenty thousand equally cool-seeming things weren’t jostling for my attention and energy. I have myself down to just four general categories now: priest work, relationships, writing, and care of self and home. Of course, each of those by itself is infinitely expandable. The secret is going to be to keep balance among them, and also to hold onto that simplicity of focus when the next shiny distraction comes along.
I had a dream a few nights ago that I was at some sort of convention or fair, and I found this amazing wolf pelt on a table of hides. (In the dream it was identified as “coyote,” but recalling it, it seems too large and heavy-furred to be anything other than a wolf.) It was pale silver-grey and white, and it glittered as though tiny fragments of mirrors had been stitched to it like sequins. I woke up briefly, and when I went back to sleep I was trying on the wolf pelt in front of a mirror, pulling the head down over my face. I made a singularly unconvincing wolf.
I think it comes back to the question of what is and isn’t my work, and acknowledging that just because something may seem beautiful and wonder-filled and intriguing doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good fit. (In fact, the dream came just as I was on the verge of chasing down one of those enticing rabbit trails.) I’m still figuring out what the right fit actually is, but I think I’m circling in on it. Or at least drawing the circle to exclude what it isn’t.
I walked into work this morning and found my dictionary open to the word “purity.” In shrine one time I received the message Purity is priority. Not only that purity is a priority for a W’ab priest, but that purity lives in what we set as our priorities. What we keep foremost in our hearts.
May I be pure.
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December 2, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 10:02 am
by Shefyt
Yesterday was the first day of the first month of Peret, the season of Growing. It’s a very holy month for me, featuring the Ten Days of Joy and one of the most important of the Bast festivals, as well as the Return of the Distant Goddess at the Winter Solstice and, of course, “Moomas,” the Establishment of the Celestial Cow.
In my personal calendar of celebrations, this month is dedicated to the Lioness Goddesses as a group. Last night I made an offering of cake, flame, and cool water to my three tiny statues that represent this multiplicity of Names. Spending time with Them is always interesting; the voice that They speak with is abrupt, penetrating, not unkind but not warm and intimate either, not at all like the voice of Bast on Her own. They’re like a council of women elders; like the Fates, They hold the skein of my life in Their hands — and sometimes comment on it — but They never tell me what to do. What I “should” do — “should” being the weasel word, that looking outside oneself for direction, for purpose. My purpose, my life, is ultimately my own to decide.
As you might have noticed, I’ve had a long hiatus here. I held a workshop on the Seven Arrows of Bast at the House of Netjer’s temple in Joliet in September, and immediately after that I had a sort of spiritual blow out (although to be honest I had been sliiiiiding downward for some weeks before that, claws raking furrows as I tried desperately to hold on). Combined with the eruption of an old obsession, it meant that I just couldn’t keep my head and my heart on religious matters, and so I dropped out of the priesthood and retreated from the community, although I never did turn my back on Bast and the Netjeru. The crisis seems to be over now, and I’m very slowly and tentatively making my way back. In addition to last night’s offering, I’ve begun doing Senut again, and I’ve been peeking into the message boards occasionally. I’ve even been feeling the first stirrings of desire to return to the priesthood, but I have doubts. If I could drop my service just like that for three months, might it happen again? And if so, is there real devotion there, or just the wanting to experience devotion? Granted, it was three months of ecstatic creative energy, which, considering my Mother, might be a form of service as well, but still…I don’t know.
So right now is a time of introspection. As I realized last night — and the Goddesses affirmed in Their dry, uncompromising way — I need to sit with myself and figure out where my heart lies now, what my priorities are. It’s a good time for it, this dark month, with Bast’s eyes gleaming like gold through the depths of the long nights — time to look deep within and see what stirs there. To see how to live following my heart.
O Bast, watch over me in this season and always. May I live, may I love, may I be true.
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June 23, 2011
Posted in Being Kemetic, Thoughts and Reflections
at 5:48 pm
by Shefyt
In the Kemetic calendar, we’re currently in the third season, Shomu, the time of greatest heat and dryness. Only a little over a month remains until the turning of the year and the beginning of the season of Inundation, but for that time the chaotic energy of the year’s end holds sway. Here in the northeastern United States, the heat of summer has already begun, though it’s a humid heat for the most part, not the parched and desiccated barrenness of Egypt in the centuries before the great dam ended the river’s seasonal rise and retreat.
Already I’m longing for the time of flood, for the changing of the year, the fire of autumn leaves as the Goddess goes south to the land of gold. I’m longing for the breath of transformation, like the perfume of lotuses rising from living pools. I love the early summer well enough, but not the dragging, sweltering days in the middle of the season. And even though this year has been relatively cool and rainy so far, I feel as though I’m laboring to renew an inner life that has been sere of late — trying to nurture my seedlings through a difficult period. Maybe when the waters rise I’ll feel that renewal in my heart, and the gardens that I want to plant in my life will prosper in their time.
Dua Sekhet, Lady of the Fens, You who awaken to Hapy’s touch — hail and praise to You! May I live; may You give me life!
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June 19, 2011
Posted in Being Kemetic, Netjeru, Tending the Shrine, Thoughts and Reflections
at 8:37 pm
by Shefyt
I spent a little time outside today, enjoying the dappled sunlight under the trees, the gentle wind, the sweet, green smell of early summer. It’s nearly the solstice, the peak of the Eye of Ra’s presence before She turns toward the south. And although my Mother isn’t the face of the Eye who departs for other regions, Her presence was strong today as well.
As I sat outside, I was thinking and writing in my journal on what my work for Her truly is. My train of thought was inspired by reading Dver’s blog post on mysticism as vocation. I’m one of those who struggle to balance priest work with the demands of being a home owner and having a full-time job. (I don’t have family commitments to further complicate the issue, fortunately, but I do have four rather demanding furry children, in the persons of my cats.) And I often wonder, should I be making other choices? Is it possible to be a real and proper priest under these conditions, when in ancient times being a priest was a full-time vocation? On top of that, I’ve been badly off-kilter the last few months, wrestling with galloping anxiety that’s affected all aspects of my life, to the point where I was barely functional on any level and was seriously considering leaving the priesthood. But somehow I’ve hung on, and with a new therapy program and medication I’m slowly beginning to regain that precarious balance, and to be able to think again about where and how to best put my energy and attention.
What I hold onto is that Bast seems to be satisfied with my service. There are things that She would like me to do, but as far as the more complicated ones are concerned, She appears content to wait until I get other parts of my life sorted out. And as I’m getting better, my ability to hear Her directives has been improving once more — and this time, so has my will and focus to actually follow them! At least this is some progress on the path.
Speaking of the path, what is it, then, that I need to be doing in order to be Her priest? Trance work, spirit work, oracles and prophecy don’t seem to be my primary tasks. I’ve been through an ordeal of late, which has taught me lasting lessons, but my work isn’t the work of ordeals. I’m not the edgewalker, bridging the liminal gap between worlds. I read the blogs of other people, who do perform such functions, and I sigh with relief: This is someone else’s task, not mine. It’s a good feeling to realize that I don’t have to do everything, that there are many ways to serve as there are practitioners, as many as there are Gods.
So what work does Bast desire of me? Tending this place, my home and Her temple. Making my offerings. Blogging for Her. Lighting candles — bringing the flame into my life, and the sweetness of perfume. Praying for the benefit of others. Bringing Her Name before the ears and eyes of all the people.
The last couple of days, Bast has wanted me to dance in shrine, to be present there in movement and in great joy. This is the most important thing, I think — to move, to live, to love life, to dance to Netjer’s song of creation. And this, I think, I can do — I only have to remember, to open the space in the midst of all the other commitments and complications in my life. If I am truly living, alight with my love for Her and my appreciation of all Her gifts, then I am indeed serving as Her priest. In fact, I can do nothing else.
O Bast, may I live, may I dance for You, may I serve as Your priest in Your temple, now and always!
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June 2, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 12:34 pm
by Shefyt
With the freshening breeze, the heat was mild enough today that I walked down to sit by the lake on my lunch hour. Light dazzled me, sunlight breaking from the wavelets as if from diamonds, the brisk wind flurried about me, and I felt the presence of Heru-hekenu, that brilliant-shining falcon, adorned with stars.
I found myself thinking of circles: the perfect ring of ripples bursting outward from a dropped stone, leaving the center glassy smooth; the gyre of the falcon, turning about stillness; the churning vortex of the tornado leaving chaos in its wake. And how we each live at the center of our own gyre, surrounded by a world in constant motion and change. Do we learn to turn with it, or do we find ourselves being tumbled? And can we learn to touch that center, to remain in contact with it, even as we turn?
The hawk, like a number of other hunting creatures — the cat, the snake, the spider — knows the balance of speed and stillness. It’s a balance that I need to learn as well.
Dua Heru-hekenu, master of protection, lord of the gyre! May You bless our minds with Your wild wisdom and our souls with wings.
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June 1, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 8:30 pm
by Shefyt
The process of getting back on my mental and emotional feet continues. I’m learning new and better means of coping, learning to measure my thoughts and reactions with new eyes. The main struggle right now is with the side effects of my current medication cocktail, which make it difficult for me to focus, particularly on reading or writing — a horror to somebody who lives by words, as I do! But one perseveres. Word by word, thought by thought, with patience and will, the sentences come, hesitant and slow, but hopeful.
Over the weekend, a couple of us from the temple took a lovely trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum. (It would have been even lovelier if one person hadn’t ended up at the New York Botanic Garden instead, but at least we were able to meet up with her for dinner.) It may not be widely known, but the Brooklyn Museum has a really excellent collection of Egyptian pieces, and it’s always worth a visit. Since I was last there, they’ve rearranged things so that the end room, which used to hold assorted Late Period artifacts, is now a moodily lit exhibit dedicated to mummies and funerary items. It’s quite well done (I especially enjoyed the translations of their copy of the Book of the Dead), but unfortunately it means that some of the pieces that previously were located there have been shoehorned into cases in the section that used to be all Old and Middle Kingdom. My favorite piece of all, a statue of a priest holding an image of Bast in a naos, is squeezed in sideways so you can hardly make out the figure of Bast — if i hadn’t known and recognized the piece, I probably would have missed Her entirely. I hope they restore Her to pride of place soon! But I’m glad enough that I at least got to see Her and speak with Her. (The photo is from an earlier trip, when She was more visible.)
The other day in shrine, I asked Bast to lift my spirits and ease my heart.
I can’t do that, She said.
“Then give me a good day,” I said.
That, I can do.
And it was in fact a very good day. Did Her reassurance simply inspire me to relax and let go, so I was more open to the goodness of the day? Or did She in truth smooth the way before me so that everything came together without flaw? I think it’s probably a little of both. And the subtlety of those two streams meeting caused the very change in my heart that She couldn’t or wouldn’t compel directly.
And I find it reassuring, actually, a sign of our own capacities for strength and self-determination, that the Gods — or at least this God, in this instance — don’t have that power to simply “fix” us. They can guide or channel us, perhaps, but primarily they have to work with us to create change in us. And even though I struggle sometimes and wish there was an easier way, I think it’s for the best that no one, not even God, can do it all for me. It makes the high points that much sweeter and the low points less desperate, less needy.
So here’s to the good days, sometimes oases in the desert, sometimes the lush gardens of the Nile. May we find coolness and beauty when we need it most — in good times spent with friends, in works of skill, in play, in art, in whatever brings us joy.
Dua Netjer! Nekhtet!
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February 21, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 10:05 pm
by Shefyt
I’ve been going through one of those stretches where I feel as though I have so desperately much to get done that I can’t figure out how to direct my energy, so I run in mental circles until I fall over in a heap. Add to that a week of intensely focused, deadline-pressured work at my job, and my brain has been very low on resources indeed.
Yesterday, after a bout of compulsively reading productivity blogs in lieu of actually being productive, I finally was able to pry myself off the machine and get outside for a walk. And oh, how much I needed that. Walking, breathing deeply and rhythmically, looking into the far distance (what a relief after staring for hours at the computer screen!), chanting affirmations to myself with every stride, I was able at last to clear out the tension, the scatteredness, and to begin to bring myself back into balance.
Just after passing the spot where I found my purification glass (some years ago now), I came across a perfect small branch of Eastern red cedar that must have been blown down in the recent strong winds. It felt like a gift, so I carried it with me, breathing in its sharp, cleansing fragrance. Once I got home, I looked cedar up in Cunningham’s Magical Aromatherapy and was amused to see that it relates to spirituality, self-control…and balance. A gift indeed — a very appropriate one! And that single branch, set in a glass vase before the naos of my shrine, now perfumes the entire room, a holy tree in miniature, a penetrating reminder of the center to which I need to return.
For this last week or so of III Peret, I’ve refreshed Heryshef’s flowers. (His yellow lilies lasted nearly the entire month!) Daffodils for the burgeoning spring — I love their fragrance too, a different kind of pungency, the purifying vibrancy of green shoots and first flowers. It’s still too early for daffodils outside, but the snowdrops beneath the apple tree have come up, and the very first snow crocuses have poked their noses above ground on the south slope — and subsequently been covered by this morning’s snowfall. But they’ll survive, and soon enough the land will be in bloom with all the fearsome, ecstatic, inevitable and wondrous beauty of the season.
Hail and praise to You, all You Gods and Goddesses of renewal! Thank You for Your gifts!
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January 2, 2011
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 1:13 pm
by Shefyt
I’m not making resolutions this year. I’m making dreams.
I dream myself taking a purifying ritual bath in my beautiful redone bathroom. Surrounded by the green and gold of a desert oasis, candles burn and fragrant waters murmur as I tend to both body and soul.
I dream myself deepening my connections to my Gods and to my community, to family and to friends both old and new.
I dream myself outdoors, breathing in the clear, fresh air, under the wide open sky.
I dream myself healthy, active, alert, and energized.
I dream myself sitting down to write with confidence and regularity.
I dream myself turning away from the Internet as a source of fulfillment and distraction, in favor of creative work and real, tangible joys.
O Netjer, may these words become! Nekhtet!
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