May 4, 2010
Posted in Poetry and Prayers, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 11:35 am
by Shefyt
Hard rain yesterday, although fortunately it had eased off each time I had to go outside; a hard month last month, although not as hard as it was last year at this time. I don’t know why I tend to go off the rails in April. Maybe it’s all that energy, pushing outward to grow, to bloom, that exacerbates my tendencies toward anxiety and overwhelm and leaves me not knowing what to do with myself, with my life.
At any rate, here we are in May, and it’s the beginning of a new Kemetic month as well — the second month of the season of Shomu, the season of heat and harvesting. Only three more months until New Year and Retreat. Soon I’ll start going through my journal for the last year, looking at the patterns, the questions asked and the answers that I may have received without even realizing it.
What does it mean, to live? That question was posed to me the other day by Nefertem, god of the unfolding lotus blossom, lord of perfumes. Of the Seven Arrows of Bast, He’s the one I’ve struggled the most to feel connected to. So to honor Him, and to try to foster that connection, I’ve begun reading a prayer to Him each morning, the first thing I do when I get out of bed.
Nefertem, You are awakening.
Nefertem, may I awaken.
Nefertem, You are awake.
Nefertem, may I be awake.
Nefertem, You arise.
Nefertem, may I arise.
Nefertem, You go forth into the world in beauty.
Nefertem, may I go forth into the world in beauty.
O great Creator, may I see Your beautiful face.
May I live. May I live. May I live. May I live.
What does it mean when I pray, “May I live”? What am I asking for? Walking through my days, doing my work, praying to my Gods, is there any time when I’m not alive? Or is it just that I forget, closed up breathless inside the shell of myself, tensed against the twin pressures of fear and blooming?
Yesterday and today, I read my prayer for Nefertem. And yesterday and today, the gardenia on my desk at work, which has limped along for the last year with shriveled buds and yellowing leaves, has put forth white flowers, perfuming the air.
Dua Nefertem! Nekhtet!
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March 22, 2010
Posted in Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 11:07 am
by Shefyt
Last Friday I went back up to the library to renew a book (The Role of the Chantress in Ancient Egypt, if you’re curious). By the corner where I was overwhelmed by fragrance, the magnolias had come out, their flowers flaring white and dazzling in the sun. And I found myself glad that I’d been there just a few days earlier, before the magnolias were actually in bloom, because, like a number of other passersby I overheard, I probably would have assumed that heart-catching perfume had to be coming from those great, glorious, shining flowers. I might never have guessed that it wasn’t the magnolias at all, but the low, dark green shrubs around their feet. Because obviously it’s the showy and beautiful flowers that have the sweetest scent, right?
But sometimes it’s the smallest, most ordinary, least remarkable of things that hold the perfume of the Gods.
A whisper on the wind, a glimmer in the dust, the small, comfortably smooth weight of a pebble, a nubbly little flower no bigger than a dime. You never know where (or in whom) you might glimpse something wonderful, an astonishing instant of beauty, a spark of light from the creator Gods’ zep tepi.
Maybe, if you look closely enough, in everything.
I brought a sprig of the sweet box back to work to share it with my office mate and told her the story above about the magnolias. Magic, we agreed –
It’s magic.
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December 16, 2009
Posted in Stalking Beauty, Ten Days of Joy, Thoughts and Reflections
at 10:38 pm
by Shefyt
[From today, the new moon, through the Feast of Bast Guards the Two Lands on December 25, I'll be doing posts for Ten Days of Joy. This was an exercise for the Shemsu and Remetj of the House of Netjer, a couple of years back, which honored Bast by sharing with each other daily that which brings us joy. It seemed like a good thing to revive.]
Today’s joy was in contrasts: sun and shadows sliding beneath bare branches as the chill wind blew, tiny pillows of intensely emerald moss nestling amidst the brown winter grasses. It feels so good to walk outside, even in winter — especially in winter, perhaps, when everything is stark and clean, and the smallest traces of life and movement stand out so vividly.
Dua Netjer! Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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December 8, 2009
Posted in Netjeru, Poetry and Prayers, Stalking Beauty
at 11:15 am
by Shefyt
After yesterday’s post on the gifts of Set’s storms, a thought occurred to me, although it’s actually rooted in a realization from the day of the snowfall itself: from standing in the shrine room, having just offered candle flame and rum-flavored iced tea to Set, gazing out the window at the darkening afternoon, and being struck with the sudden beauty of it, the gentle and relentless descent of the snow, the world beneath the clouds possessed of a profound stillness and yet also of a dynamic energy, a subtly electric tension.
There’s a danger in constructing a false dichotomy where Set is all wildness and chaotic upheaval and Heru is all beauty and transformed, purified order. Like the Taoist yin-yang symbol, even though They’re opposites, They also contain the seeds of each other. Heru has His wildness too, in the tearing claws, in the battering power of unfettered wings, in the unleashed might of the King as warrior, like a lion in the carnage of battle. And Set is beautiful in and of Himself, not merely for what He gives way to. “You are beautiful,” I told Him in the shrine room that afternoon, awed. It seemed to amuse Him. So here are a few more words on the beauty of Set.
Praising the Beauty of Set
O Set, I praise Your great and implacable beauty:
in the looming majesty of the thunderhead,
in the shivery hush of snow falling at twilight,
in the lightning-edged whorls of the fractal,
in the wind-carved austerity of the desert at high noon,
in the fierce and subtle glitter of its sands.
Your ecstasy is in the howl of passion, of exertion,
in the stretch of the body driven beyond all rational limits,
in the hot, animal confusion of desire and of war.
Your rage is in the cold, burning weight of the iron blade,
perfect in balance, the shuddering slip of the faultline,
the swift-swelling wave that rises, curling and smooth, to block out the sky.
In all of Your wonder and Your terror, You are beautiful:
You are all things exotic and rare and deeply strange.
Your hands are scented with myrrh, with frankincense,
with perfumes from far-off lands that have not yet been named.
Son of Nut, Your smile is the nuclear flare of an exploding star,
expending its light and heat without limit into the black void of space.
You are the crocodile-jawed storm of destruction,
You are the raw shout of defiance snatched away by the teeth of the gale,
and You are the defiance that remains sealed within the heart, silent and pure.
In Your two hands, You hold despair and hope.
In all things, O Set, You are beautiful.
Dua Set! Nekhtet!
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December 7, 2009
Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:12 am
by Shefyt
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!
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October 15, 2009
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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