This year I decided it was time to bring back ye olde Wep Ronpet execration. I put out an offer for folks to send in anything they’d like to have thrown into my execration pot like I always did, and then put off planning anything for the actual event until the day before. Even though I had decided I wanted to do this, and I knew it was important to actually think ahead to plan for things, my brain absolutely refused to work on anything directly until the deadline was on my front doorstep.
Compared to years prior, there were only a small number of requests sent in, so that meant I could focus on the individual petitions more directly. I was originally thinking I would create a snake that was stuffed with petitions, but due to the quantity, every single petition was turned into a snake instead.
For this year I opted to do three rituals to create heka that was hopefully more potent. While setting up for my first ritual, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia as I opened up my shrine storage box and saw all of these items that I used to use on the regular laid before me. Everything had been put away with such care, and I had thought ahead to think through where I’d instinctively look for stuff, so finding things was easier than I expected. Doing the Year of Rites made it to where I could actually put rites together without a lot of effort, because the most common rites I perform now have a rubric that I can pull, and all of the items that I would need are stored somewhere that is hard to forget.
On the first day, I did a rite for Set, calling him to the space and reading each petition to him, explaining the context behind what was going on and what was needed (where applicable) to transform the situation into something better. Because I wanted to read everything to him, I decided that I would fold each of the petitions during the ritual, and this proved to be a questionable choice. It took me so long to fold these, I had to use two incense sticks because I am just not that skilled at folding origami snakes :’)
After each petition was read and snake-ified, I threw them into the execration pot. Once all of the petitions were read, I sealed them up to be burned the next day.
The next day I pulled an execration rite from the fourth quarter of my Year of Rites fiasco. After cutting each snake into pieces, I took them outside to be burned. Turns out that tracing paper takes to flame easily, and I barely had to do any work to make sure everything caught fire and turned to ash. Afterwards, I turned out the contents of the execration pot and ground it into the dirt so that you’d never even know these snakes existed. Truly wiping out the isfet from the world.
For the final ritual, I decided to do a “Making Ma’at” rite (also from the Year of Rites) to help fill the void left by destroying the isfet with ma’at. For those of you who are new to execrations, destroying a/pep is only one half of the equation for creating balance. Not only must you remove isfet, but you must work to fill that empty space with ma’at. I had had the idea of creating a new amulet that involved an opening lotus, and it was serendipitous that KO’s god of the year for this year is Nefertem, a deity tied to the lotus. Unfortunately, my gold pens are not working, so the piece isn’t finished. I offered it to the NTRW anyways.
Overall, I think I like doing the three-rite version of the yearly execration. It keeps everything small enough that I don’t run out of energy doing the rites (as opposed to having one long ritual where I offer the petitions, burn the petitions, then create ma’at), and I enjoyed being able to focus on individual petitions for once. Every time I’ve done this, each petition gets read to Set, but it’s never been ritualized like this year.
A big thank you to everyone who participated. I hope ma’at is proliferated for all of us in the year ahead.
The Twisted Rope 