February 3, 2012
Posted in Creative Fire, On Writing, Pagan Blog Project 2012
at 10:34 pm
by Shefyt
(I wasn’t sure I would be able to squeeze out this Pagan Blog Project post. Because the songs just wouldn’t stop coming….)
Kemet is rife with creator Gods, and we, their children, are creators too. Our words take on life, the breath of our mouths as we speak or sing or laugh; our hands with their skill give form, color, and texture; our bodies are eloquent in movement, tracing the shapes of our emotions, our patterns of our relationship to the space around us. Even if we don’t necessarily consider ourselves “artists” or “talented” — we write, we draw, we do crafts, we sing alone in the car, we arrange our homes or our rooms or our shrines, we collect things and put them together in ways that speak to us, we weave magic and rituals, we build, code, problem-solve, design, embellish, and adorn. And so much more. In so many ways, we shape worlds, and we fill them with what’s in our hearts.
Writing is my own main form of creativity, although I also dabble in various others. Whatever form it takes, though, my creativity tends to be compulsive, cyclical, and all-consuming. I get swept up by what I’ve taken to calling “enthusiasms,” which feel very much like what I imagine the Celtic experience of “fire in the head” must be. (“Fire of the sun” in a Kemetic context, I suppose. Or maybe “fire of Sia.”) Once I’m struck, there’s no letting go until the energy has burned through me. And then it passes, and I don’t quite know what to do with myself until the next round begins.
Sometimes it can be exhausting. Especially when I’m working on a song and I end up singing a tune over and over and over waiting for the words to come — my voice gives out, my brain feels hot and raw, scraped by the repetition of half-finished lines, and I just want to whimper, “Please, God, make it stop!” But I don’t really want it to stop. Because then I would miss the extraordinary joy and triumph of accomplishment when the work is finally done and ready for me to let it go. That feeling never dims, never gets old. Each creation is unique in its process, its challenges, its significance. Each one shines with its own light.
The work is part of my service, too, to my Mother Bast and all the Gods. Whether it be songs or poetry, fiction or blog posts, plays or rituals, it’s one of the gifts that I have to offer. I always hope that some reader finds pleasure in it, or insight, or fellowship, or even a moment’s distraction. But even if no one ever read me at all, I think I would still have to dance with the words. For the sake of connecting with and telling the story of whatever it is that inspires me. For the sake of the worlds that want to be born.
A glowing ball of pulsating light
that fills up the space before the dark night,
the thing that shines on the world below
and on me and you, wherever we go.
— my first poem, written at age seven
All You Creator Gods, may You bless the work of our hands and hearts! Dua Netjer!
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November 10, 2010
Posted in Creative Fire, On Writing, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:46 pm
by Shefyt
A briefly golden morning, the sun slanting upward through a narrow gap in the overcast east to emblaze hilltops, thinning cloud trails, the highest branches of the trees. A lotus-light, fleeting and magical.
Last month I wrote my fiftieth song for the Netjeru.* I’m still a little incredulous at this, considering that I’d never imagined I would be writing songs at all. And it was for Amun-Ra, who started the whole thing nearly four years ago, as I knelt before His shrine and wondered aloud what special service I could do for Him. Sing! He told me emphatically, and from that moment, that first awkward, self-conscious rendition of the House of Netjer classic “Ankh, Ujda, Seneb,” which was the only vaguely appropriate song that I knew at the time, has somehow arisen a whole repertoire of songs for many different Gods and festivals.
The sources of creativity are certainly mysterious! But it makes perfect sense that it would be Amun-Ra who set me on this path. As the syncretism of Amun and Ra, He’s always seemed to me an embodiment — an en-God-ment? — of the creative process itself, the journey that extends from the Hidden to the Manifest, from the first leaping electricity of connection and inspiration to the particular luminosity of the finished work. And now that I’ve been reminded of this, I plan to offer my nonmusical writing projects to Him and to seek His help in getting those off the ground as well.
Dua Amun-Ra, Lord of the Hidden Wind, Lord of the Radiant Sun! May You bless all the works of my mind and imagination!
—–
Photo of my Amun-Ra shrine, with the statue featuring the new plumes that I *finally* made for Him this past summer (detail; click photo for the full shrine.).
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* And in the time it’s taken me to get around to writing this post, I’m already up to song #53. Note to self: Life does not stand still and wait for you to blog about it.
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February 12, 2009
Posted in Creative Fire, Netjeru, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 10:37 am
by Shefyt
A wild morning — high wind; heavy clouds parting to show glimpses of the perfect clarity of the sky beyond; a delicate veil of mist across the hilltops lit up shimmering by the rising amber flame of the sun; and something in the quality of the light catching in last fall’s leaves, on the tawny grass and the bare-branched trees, so that the world took on an orange cast beneath the dark gray, sculptured sky. A tigerish morning, grrr.
The last few days have felt magical, numinous. I don’t know why. The season? The fact that I’m gearing up to work seriously on my Sau studies again? Hormones from my period? For whatever reason, everything seems possible — and then I fall back into one or more of my sludgy bad habits, until I just want to bite myself for stupidity. Zep Tepi — put down the bad, pick up the good, and start again. So here we go.
One of today’s festivals is the Procession of Nesert, flame goddess, Eye of Ra.It brings me back to the idea of fire, tigers, burning. Good old William Blake. A tiger day, or possibly a lynx day — lynx-fierce, lynx-secretive. Way back before I had really discovered Bast or begun studying Kemet, my personal pantheon included a goddess Who I knew only as the Lady of the Secret Inner Flame. I think now that She was, in fact, Bast. And Bast, of late, has been giving me tiny reminders: Take time for yourself. Be more secret. Out of the hidden, out of the inward, out of the mysterious unseen, the soul is restored to life and creativity arises, like the Bennu bird, singing.
Blue sky now, faint sunlight, and the wind a crazed tea-kettle shrieking past my window. There’s a place I want to go to at lunchtime — the top of the wooded slope looking out over the lake, a place of water and trees and stone and wind and sky, as close as I can get to hilltop or mountaintop on a half-hour walk. The path there has been closed for some kind of construction for months; I’ll have to see if it’s open today, or at least accessible. And then — who knows?
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