July 31, 2011
Posted in Festivals
at 8:22 am
by Shefyt
The sun rose victorious this morning, burning through the hazy sky on the third of the intercalary days. It’s the birthday of Set, Lord of Storms, who stands at the prow of the sun barque to slay the Uncreated so that Ra can enter the heavens. It can be a day of chaos, but to me it feels like a day of strength and purpose. At least this year, it’s a call to focus one’s whole self upon the work to be done.
The oracle for the year has been posted, and the year belongs to Ptah, God of Creation who spoke the world into being. It’s a year of building upon the foundations that have been set in Zep Tepi. As Aset recounts in the oracle, we all have a choice in our lives: to construct or to cast down. The power of words and actions belongs to every one of us, and like Set’s might it can be turned toward either preservation or destruction.
In about half an hour, the attendees at Retreat will be gathering together to perform a group Senut ritual, led by the Nisut. It’s a rite of affirming our place in the universe, our connections to our Gods and ancestors, to our teachers and community. It’s a good place to begin, centered in our world, purified and ready to go forth in ma’at. Everyone seems eager for this coming year, ready to rise to the challenge and create something positive in their lives, and in the world.
Dua Set, born of Nut! You who split the sky, You are the strongest of all the Gods. May we be strong in ourselves, to build, to strive, and to protect. Nekhtet!
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December 29, 2010
Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, The Wild Sky
at 9:37 pm
by Shefyt
On Monday, shoveling my driveway after the season’s first blizzard, I paused to look up into a sky of the most extraordinary blue, only a couple of shades lighter than lapis. I murmured a prayer to Hethert, the Lady of Heaven. Only a moment or two later, I glanced up again to see a hawk riding the tumbling currents of the air, the pale undersides of its wings flashing as they flared first to one side and then the other, like a dancer’s fans.
Dua to Heru, dwelling in joy in His House; dua to She Who Takes Wing as the Female Falcon.
Yesterday, as I was driving to work in the morning, the sky was overcast with rumpled red clouds, like a sailor’s warning. The sun hadn’t yet risen, when from behind the eastern horizon a pillar of red light reared upward, striking across the face of those clouds like a searchlight’s beam.
Dua to Ra in His sun barque; dua to Set standing upon the prow, spear raised against the uncreated one.
This afternoon, on the way to order more tile for the ongoing bathroom project, I was stopped at a traffic signal, and the westering sun blazed in through my car’s rear window, pouring the warm beauty of its light across my dashboard. I reached out to cup a handful of gold.
Dua to Tem in His completeness; dua to the Peaceful One, His firstborn Daughter.
Hail and praise to all the Gods, who ensoul the world.
Dua Netjer! Nekhtet!
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December 3, 2010
Posted in Friday Findings, Netjeru
at 3:18 pm
by Shefyt
Today is the first day of the season of Peret, or Growing. According to the House of Netjer’s yearly oracle, this year is dedicated to three Gods, one for each season, and the deity who is over Peret is Mut, the great Lady of Karnak, wife of Amun and mother of Khonsu. So for today’s Finding, here are a few interesting images of this great Mother and protector:
- This is a quite lovely statue of Her from the Luxor Museum in Egypt.
- Scroll down the page a little to see an armlet featuring a Nubian four-winged Mut. I like the way this makes Her look like a butterfly.
- From the British Museum, a votive offering of a barque that once held a figure of Mut, offered at Karnak by Queen Mutemwia, whose name means “Mut is in the barque.” (I think somebody had way too much fun with this one.)
- This Middle Kingdom stela features the cat of Mut and the goose of Amun. (The goose looks rather pleased with himself, while the cat looks a bit cranky.)
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- And completely unrelated to the above, as a special bonus for the Wesir Mysteries, which have just ended — the sperm of Wesir!
- Also somewhat appropriate for the Mysteries: Set in the slaughter-house of Sekhmet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Set in the bound-prisoner pose before; very interesting!
Dua Netjer! Dua Mut! Nekhtet!
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March 30, 2010
Posted in Festivals, Netjeru
at 8:00 am
by Shefyt
Two weeks ago, witch hazel and white crocus were ablaze all along Shapiro Walk. Last week, those fiery explosions had already faded and dried to a dark maroon, and the crocuses had slumped down onto the mulch, their lightless petals shriveled and translucent. This week the forsythia are in full cry, and the lily-flowered magnolias are just cracking their buds, clouds of pale pink and ivory rising up against the rain-dark trees and the pale stone of the university buildings. The beauties of the season pass so quickly, it seems as though we barely glimpse them before they’re gone.
Yesterday and today comprise the Festival of Set, Lord of the Oasis. It’s oddly appropriate for this time of year in the northeastern United States — for, if you think about it, winter is our desert, ruled by the Lord of Storms, with the green world’s life locked away in dormant trees and frozen earth. But now the winter’s grip has (hopefully!) loosened, the rains of renewal are falling, and the land is bursting forth into brief-lived, frenetic blooms, just as the desert blooms for mere hours after its own rare rain showers. And if Set is Lord of Change, then He is there, too, in the wild and fleeting flowers, in the splitting open of the buds, in the wind-shaken cherry blossoms’ fluttering fall.
The oasis is the place of reprieve from harshness, of the irrepressible arising of life from the depths of the earth. And although it’s limited by the desert that surrounds it and by the finite length of this stage in our journey, it’s a place that we can always find and return to.
Yesterday I made offerings and sang for Set, thanking Him for sparing my house and household during the winter storms and asking Him to smile upon us for the rest of the year. May the Lord of the Oasis grant you a peaceful spring as well!
Dua Set! 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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March 30, 2009
Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty
at 3:47 pm
by Shefyt
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.
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