October 22, 2009
Posted in The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 12:21 pm
by Shefyt
Last evening, driving home, was an evening of layers: blue sky high above great sheets of sun-and-shadow clouds; the late golden light cutting across the air to ignite the treetops, turning them into brassy many-colored fires, or striking lower, between them, to burn on houses, grass, cars; the transitioning leaves in all their autumn hues overlapping like feathers; and, most keen of all, my own awareness of existing on multiple levels, of making the everyday drive, part of the New Jersey routine of commuters, and at the same time being with the sky, and also every place in between, breathing between earth and heaven, like Shu.
This morning I got up early to offer to Heru-hekenu on His feast day: flame, cool water, a little Florida water for scent, and teriyaki chicken. His message to me in return was very simple: Fly.
What does it mean to fly? I won’t ever suddenly sprout wings, except perhaps in dreams. But even while my feet are on the ground (or the gas pedal), I can still soar.
What sets your spirit flying?
Dua Heru-hekenu! Nekhtet!
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February 13, 2009
Posted in Parks and Rivers, The Wild Sky
at 8:50 am
by Shefyt
So the path was closed, but I went around the long way, through the maze of fenced-in small athletic fields, trying to figure out how to get to where I was trying to go. (I could have just gone the really long way, around the fields altogether, down through the woods and back along the bottom path, but I was curious.) I thought I was walled in for sure at one point, faced with a wire fence that there didn’t seem to be any way out of — and that would have been okay, since I found a good sitting stone there, at the foot of a silver beech tree, with a fine view of the water. But after a few minutes I went on through the trees and finally found a break in the fence where they’re in the midst of installing a new one (to be electrified eventually, but fortunately not yet). From there, I was able to follow the nature-walk path — open at the bottom end — up onto the hill, and spend a little time right where I wanted to be: at the top of the cutting, about thirty feet above the crossroad, looking out across the bridge and the lake, listening to the wind roar in the treetops and hiss in the rattling beech leaves and tall, sere grasses, and talking to my various gods. It was good.
And coming back, I was able to pinpoint exactly where the path closure is, so in the future I can get around it without quite so extensive a diversion. But still, it was a fun detour. There’s a lot to be said for going woods-romping on one’s lunch break. And the wind! Shake-you-to-the-heart wind, powerful and fierce, yet warm and vital and alive.
Wind lion roaring,
Great Shu, facing yesterday —
fangs bared, mane flaring.
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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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