Redefining Order

Truth. Order. Justice.

The three words that I’ve seen used the most to describe ma’at.

Out of these three words, “order” always sticks out to me as potentially being a bad choice to describe ma’at. Why? Well, in short, I believe its because we tend to use one variation of “order” at the exclusion of other possible definitions. As an experiment to start the conversation off, what do you think of when you think of the word order? Maybe some of you think of

or maybe

Or maybe it’s

Even if you didn’t think of these specific examples, I’m willing to bet that whatever came to your mind shared some of the same underlying associations as the gifs above. That’s because our culture has a specific inferred meaning when we use the word “order” — whether we acknowledge those associations or not.

Whenever the word “order” is used, it’s almost always in the context of a very clear difference of power. It’s often used in terms of schools, where teachers demand order. Or in the military, where soldiers are given orders. Or even in more harmless situations, where you place an order at a restaurant. All of these things imply a situation where the person receiving the “order” is not allowed to rebuff the order. The soldier is not allowed to tell their commander “no,” students can be heavily punished for telling their teachers no, and can you imagine what would happen if a waiter told you that your order was not going to be followed or not allowed? Even when a waiter has to tell someone that something in their order isn’t available due to circumstances beyond their control, people lose their minds.

In our cultural lexicon, order usually means that you’re doing something without question. It’s a directive that you must follow, lest you get into trouble. For most of us in the US, “order” is essentially authoritarian in nature — to the point that the word “authoritarian” is used in the Oxford definition for “order.”

While there is second definition for “order,” I don’t think that most of us are using that definition when we tie the word “order” to ma’at. I’ve watched people dictate that authoritarian order is inherently implied and mandatory with ma’at simply because the Egyptians engaged in a form of it, and it overlaps with our preconceived notion of order and what it entails. Which is to say that since they so readily line up with one another via authoritarianism, I feel like most people are lazily assuming that one begets the other (authoritarian order begets ma’atian order.) What I’d really like to do with this post is challenge that notion by redefining what order could mean for us when associated with ma’at. And to also buck the idea that authoritarianism is inherent in, and therefore mandatory to, our religious structure.

A New Frame of Reference

The less-often cited definition for order usually entails things such as “a specific pattern or sequence,” such as alphabetical order, numerical order, etc. I believe that this definition is closer to what we need, but I feel that it could use refinement for our specific needs.

I would like to posit that for our needs, order would mean something along the lines of “a predictable rhythm or pattern.”

Every single living thing/system on this planet has (ideally) a rhythm, a pattern to their existence. You wake up after sleeping, you do the general same routine after you get up, you might do similar things Monday through Friday, and then do a secondary set of “similar things” on Saturday and Sunday. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The night follows the day, and the moon is constantly shifting between being visible and completely non-existent to the naked eye.

These patterns form the basis of our existence, and the nature of our patterns often determines whether we’re healthy and having our needs met or not. In the last post about determining ma’at from isfet, I mentioned that the frequency of doing something can often turn innocuous acts into something more isfetian in nature, and this plays into the idea of regular habits and patterns. If you do something that is unhealthy once in a while, its usually not a big deal. Do it all the time, and it becomes a pattern that can slowly unravel your life.

When we’re talking about ma’atian order, we’re talking about having rhythms that help support living things. When you’re acting in ma’at, you’re acting to maintain these beneficial rhythms, while also acting to destroy, alter or remove patterns that hurt living things.

When viewed from this perspective, it explains why the Egyptians crafted tons of holidays, rituals, and actions that were consistently enacted upon to help ensure that the patterns of the Duat and earth alike were kept in regularity. Because anything that could be done to make sure that the patterns of the world stayed as consistent as possible should be done as a part of maintaining ma’at.

I also think it should go without saying that making these regular patterns as predictable as possible was also on the agenda. Humans tend to do best with a certain level of predictability in their life, and I feel like including this in the understood meaning of ma’atian order only serves to help us really understand and appreciate how important the consistency of it all really is.

The rhythm should be dynamic in the sense that it has diversity and harmony, but it still needs to have some level of regular occurrence in order to be stable. When examined on a whole, it becomes easier to see how the diversity and harmony feed into the stable complexity of it all. Everything feeds into everything else, and when the rhythm of it all is maintained, everything more or less gets its needs met.

When Authoritarian Order is Conflated with Ma’atian Order

From this perspective it becomes easier to see how authoritarian order really doesn’t synergize well with ma’at. Authoritarianism seeks to control (create “order”) everything it touches, and severely punishes anything trying to resist its control. To this end, it often seeks to divide people into two groups: and in-group (us) and an antagonistic out-group (them), and they basically use the in-group to keep the out-group in check as much as possible. You can see this in America right now in the form of loosely-made militia groups that act out a sort of vigilante justice wherever they’re allowed to.

Because the in-group always needs an out-group, authoritarianism will consistently find new demographics to attack, and in the process usually ends up eradicating the harmony and diversity necessary to keep ma’at in place. People are usually forced to live within strict confines and regulations at the risk of extreme punishment, with no real recourse to punish those who are putting the regulations in place. Ultimately, there is no means to change your fate or change the world you live in, you’re ultimately forced to deal with whatever you are given because there is little-to-no alternatives available to you. This, of course, is mentally taxing and degrading. The system as a whole may continue to exist, but its parts and pieces are not healthy, and thus are living in a form of chronic disorder (isfet.)

When you start to really examine how this system can destroy people’s health, it becomes painfully clear that by its very nature, authoritarianism does not foster ma’at. Only a tiny percent of the population really flourishes under authoritarianism, leaving the rest of the population to wither and rot.

And for those of you who are wondering if I feel that the ancient Egyptians were doing things outside of ma’at, I would say that based off of today’s standards, the answer is yes. Plenty of their population lived in unnecessary squalor due to inequality at play within the society, and I can’t say that I believe that to be within ma’at. Yes, upper class people were to look after their subjects and provide them with what they needed, but its been shown time and time again that people who are in positions of privilege and esteem typically aren’t willing to give what they have away unless they really really have to.

While I understand that a couple thousand years ago was different, and that we shouldn’t necessarily judge ancient cultures based off of today’s expectations, I also feel its our job to reflect critically on the past, not to assume that the movements of the past are inherently superior simply because they’re old. The Egyptians committed all sorts of brutal acts in the name of ma’at. If we’re able to deem these acts as being not-within-ma’at, I’m pretty sure we could find it in ourselves to do the same with their governmental system, instead of blindly trying to recreate it in the here and now.

Ma’atian Order

At its core, ma’atian order strives to bring balance and health to all of its individual components. It is a bottom-up mentality, ensuring that the smallest, yet most foundational parts are taken care of, with the understanding that healthy foundations allow everything else above it to thrive. This format allows for (relatively) predictable patterns to emerge that allows for all of the parts of the system to synchronize together. It is through the harmonization of all of the parts that allows the system to really thrive and creates the predictable “order” that everyone seeks.

It is my hope that moving forward, if the word “order” is used to define ma’at, that this is the definition that comes to mind, because this is the only definition of “order” that really makes any sense within the ma’atian paradigm.

Relevant Posts:

• Ma’at, Order, and Everything in Between
• A Proposed Model
• KRT: Creation, Uncreation, and Balance
• We Should Worry about Authoritarian Practices, Not Just Populist Leaders

 

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A Proposed Model for Determining Ma’at vs. Isfet

Before you read this post, you need to read the first and second parts of this series, otherwise nothing will make sense.

So far, I’ve talked about how ma’at is like a regenerative system, which is a living series of processes that will renew and regenerate themselves provided their unique balance is maintained. Some examples of regenerative systems in daily life are ecosystems or your body. In opposition to this is isfet, which is what happens when disorder overtakes a regenerative system and makes it degenerative. Degenerative systems are not sustainable and tend to destroy the balance of other nearby systems. In this post, I’d like to discuss how we can use this model to determine if something we’re doing is more in alignment with isfet or ma’at.

Using this Model

So now we’re at the most important part of this whole discussion. We’ve laid the framework for understanding:

• how systems work
• how ma’at aligns with regenerative systems
• how disorder tests the resiliency of a system
• how too much disorder will put your regenerative balance is at risk
• how isfet is an embodiment of degradation of natural systems.

Now comes the time for bringing it all together so that we can better reflect on our own actions and whether they relate to isfet, ma’at, or somewhere in between.

The reason that viewing ma’at as a system was so revolutionary for me was because it made it so much easier to understand if something was actually aligning with ma’at or not — because we’re using very concrete terms. Many times, I’ve found that people want to distort ma’at into being something that is relatively passive, or ultimately doesn’t require the person to really change or grow. To summarize this model for ma’at, it would be: if it bothers me, it’s isfet. If it doesn’t bother me, it’s ma’at.

However, by establishing that ma’at is like a particular thing that has a particular set of needs that must be met in order to be maintained, it really allows us to examine whether the things we do in our lives actually lives up to those needs, regardless of our own biases or feeling. By using a structure that can be clearly defined, it removes at least a portion of our bias, and allows us to be more objective in our assessment of ma’at. It also allows us to be very succinct when describing it.

Put succinctly: if something is pushing multiple systems towards degeneration, it’s likely aligned with isfet. If something pushes multiple systems towards regeneration, it’s likely aligned with ma’at.

For example, humans need several things to really survive and be healthy. Things such as:

• Access to nutritious food, shelter, clean clothing (you’ll note, all of these are markers of having lived in ma’at in antiquity)
• Access to healthy and supportive relationships. Humans are social creatures, and we need some amount of social interaction to be healthy.
• Ability to self-express in a fashion that doesn’t hurt others (directly or otherwise)
• Ability to be autonomous over our own choices and decisions, the feeling of having some control over your life and future.

So, if these things are all necessary for human systems to be healthy, then we know that anything that directly opposes these things is isfetian in nature.

Caveats: Frequency, Context, Scope, and Scale

Now, of course, there is some grey area in here. There are a few other considerations that must be applied when determining whether something is truly isfetian or ma’atian; things such as frequency, context, scope.

Frequency is about as straightforward as it sounds. That whole bit about disorder being the beginning of the sliding towards ultimately unraveling (isfet) means that a singular action isn’t necessarily going to lead you straight into isfet-town. For example, I know that fast food is really bad for my health. It is ultimately a degenerative force in my life. However, if I choose to eat it occasionally, it’s not likely going to qualify 100% as isfet in my specific system. Why? Because I’ve enacted moderation.

There are always places where we can have little exceptions to the moderation that marks our daily life. In antiquity, this is largely the role that festivals and holidays performed. They allowed people to let loose and let go for a short period of time before they fell back into the regularity of daily life. In our modern era, this isn’t always the case, and I’ve found that many of us are constantly living on the edge of making decisions that ultimately undo our efforts to thrive.

In short, frequency is the difference between engaging in a damaging behaviour in moderation vs. engaging in it all the time. Its the difference between eating something that’s bad for you once a month vs. every day. The frequency is vital to keep in mind when considering whether something is damaging or not. The less often you engage in damaging activities, the less likely they are to evoke an isfetian reaction in your specific system (aka your body and/or life.)

The context and scale of an action should also be considered, because it turns out that changing the scope or context of an action often will change whether its damaging or not — and that’s mostly because we live in a degenerative system. For example, let’s take the fast food thing mentioned above. On a small scale, when I’m really only thinking about how it effects me and me alone, it’s relatively harmless when in moderation. However, on a large scale, one might consider the act of giving your money to a fast food establishment isfetian. Why? Because many of these establishments treat their employees horribly. They engage in practices that degrade people’s lives by purposefully underpaying them and denying them access to necessary resources. Many of these companies engage in practices that wreck the environment, they lobby for legislation that allows them to get away with bad practices, and most of these companies aren’t putting much beneficial energy back into the world.

There is a phrase, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism,” and that’s truly visible when using this model. When it comes to most larger systems, such as supply chains, economies, and governments — nothing is currently sustainable, and as such, is degenerative in nature (as I mentioned in previous posts.) The context of every action is important, because I think it’s vital that we remember that so much of our day to day lives are built on practices that are not sustainable (aka degenerative), and often hurt marginalized countries and peoples the hardest. While a singular act on a small scale is relatively harmless, when considering the full scope of the process of that act even being available to you — the true harm often comes into focus.

This, of course, muddies the water because it can be ethically confusing to determine how on earth to do anything without putting energy into an inherently isfetian system, but that’s also why engaging in activism, being politically active, and holding those in positions of power accountable is all the more important. I would argue that not doing so leans you towards isfet, because it means you’re choosing to ignore the degenerative systems that are eating away at the regenerative system that is you.

And please bear in mind: sometimes the ma’atian choice, the course of action that honors the regenerative nature in you and others, will be painful or difficult. Many people want to equate ma’at to the path of least resistance, and I am here to tell you that this is often not the case. That’s why its very important to really examine all of the aspects of a given course of action to ensure you’re not copping out due to fear of the new and unknown.

Useful Questions to Consider

Here are some examples of questions that can be asked when trying to determine whether a large-scale system is regenerative or not:

• Will this legislation/action/structure degrade human lives?
• Will it cause people to lose their autonomy?
• Will it degrade the community and connections that people have?
• Will it restrict access to healthy food, clean water, adequate housing and healthcare?
• Will it oppress or hold back a particular group of people (please keep in mind that leveling the playing field between classes or races is not oppression)?
• Does it rely on a biased system/structure to reinforce it?
• Does it needlessly destroy nature?
• Does it endanger natural resources and living things?
• Does it destroy or threaten other regenerative systems?
• Does it lead us closer to things like climate change or fascism?

And in case its not clear yet, if the answer to these is yes, it’s isfetian in nature.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when trying to determine whether a small-scale interaction is regenerative or not:

• Does this harm my health?
• Does this hurt my relationships or those around me needlessly?
• Does this incite self-hatred or acts of violence or abuse against the self?
• Will this cause you regret or shame later on?
• Does this hinder my or others growth, however painful?
• Would those who care about you condone this choice?

Of course, sometimes these things are not clear cut, and that’s why its important to always consider the wider context of a situation as discussed above.

If you’ve managed to make it through all three posts, I congratulate you. If you have any questions or would like to suggest any other means of refining this model, I welcome them!

 

A Year of Rites: Reflections, Redirections

With 2019 having come to a close, so too has both the Year of Rites project and Making Ma’at project come to a close. I wasn’t sure if there was anything to say about either, but it feels weird to not do a recap of both before moving onto whatever next chapter lay ahead.

Making Ma’at

I will start by saying that I have a hard time not viewing both projects as something of a failure. The Making Ma’at project barely got off the ground, and once we lost the repository that contained what everyone had written, the project basically was dead in the water. I personally think that that is a crying shame, because we really do lack ready-made resources for honoring ma’at, and with ma’at being at the center of our religion, it feels weird that we don’t have more to work with.

When it comes to pinpointing why this project didn’t go very far, I personally blame a bit of myself — in that I didn’t have the energy or time to consistently research new prompts and ideas to get people creating new stuff to add to the project. But on the flip side, I also feel like no one was overly committed to the project if no one else was working to come up with new ideas. Which is honestly the biggest problem with our community, isn’t it.

My hope is that maybe people will still add to the project in their own time, or that what was created will at least serve as something of a resource for those in the future.

Year of Rites

Then there is the cluster that was the Year of Rites. I knew going into the YoR that I was hoping for more than I should. I knew that the odds of people participating in it were slim. I knew that the odds of me being able to complete everything to a level that I would prefer would be slim — especially if my grandfather died along the way. But I have a bad problem with hoping for more than I should, and in the end, I was disappointed by it all. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any useful lessons along the way, however.

First off, I will say that creating 18 rubrics in a year is a horrible idea unless you have a ton of time and mental space to work with. I was really trying to embody traditional verbiage and heka because I feared straying too far from verbatim sources, and so crafting something 100% from scratch didn’t happen very often. As such, I would scour the source materials to try and find sections that made sense for what I was trying to create. Source materials take forever for me to read, and I would often have to read 50 pages before I found a little tidbit that would be useful for whatever rubric I was working on.

When I wasn’t overly stressed, working the rubrics wasn’t all that bad because you get to learn a lot of random information from sifting through source materials. As a byproduct, it’s easier to follow some of the information that is presented in various books and papers. I can also say that reading the source materials also gave me a very good understanding of how sentences should be structured and words selected to make better heka. Only after I started working on these rubrics did I realize that my old rituals had a lot of wiggle room and a lukewarm quality in many of the words chosen.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that each rubric took hours to make, they were hardly commented on, and probably four people used them throughout the year. If I ever did this again, I’d cut the rubric creation down to maybe two versions for an entire year. Anything more than that is unrealistic.

As for the rituals themselves, I managed to complete every ritual up until the end of June when things went on hiatus to take care of grandpa. After that, I completed 3 out of 4 rites per month until I quit doing it all together in October. If we want to count my eating-as-a-ritual for the Mysteries, then I completed all of December’s work as well, though none of the originally-planned rituals were performed.

All in all, I did more than I didn’t, but it still doesn’t feel like I accomplished much. Having my depression completely wipe the desire out of me to do anything really put a bind on the end of the year, and I still don’t know how I feel about that. If I’m also being honest, the lack of feedback and participation on the by and large didn’t motivate me to continue, either. By June I was wrapped in a sort of “no one really cares” state, which is why the write-ups stopped around that time. It’s also why I quit documenting my rites on IG, and it’s why I never bothered to rework the rubrics in September when I found I disliked them vehemently (this also played into why I didn’t want to keep doing the rituals come October — I had to use new rubrics that I hated.)

As my ability and desire to perform these rites degraded across the year, I can say that structured rituals can serve as a good focal point for me if I’m not too stressed or depressed. When I’m not doing good mentally, its very easy to just go through the motions of the ritual and not really be present. If I’m not present, it’s really not doing me much good and I usually end up rushing everything as quickly as possible (which probably doesn’t do the NTRW much good, either.) The final rites that I did during the Mysteries were much better at keeping me present — more so than doing a structured ritual. I think there is something important to that.

So what now?

I realized somewhere around September that I would soon need to start making decisions about my future with performing regular rituals for the NTRW; along with what my future with Kemeticism would actually look like once this year was over. I don’t like performing standard, structured rituals if I’m being completely honest. It’s hard for me to find reason to set aside the time, clear out the space, and sit down to perform these rites. Perhaps if I had the right space, or perhaps if I got more out of the experience, I would feel differently. And while I understand that these rituals are supposed to be for the NTRW, it doesn’t change the fact that unless I find a way to repackage them or get more out of them, I’m not likely to perform them. We’re all human, and as humans, we don’t do well with tasks that we view as pointless or not serving a purpose. And that’s exactly where I ended up with most of my rituals by the time October rolled around.

However, I don’t know that I can, in good conscience (yes), just set rituals aside and not perform them ever at all. Rereading Roberts’ books in 2018 really drove home (for me) that the original religious structure really placed a heavy emphasis on our rituals helping to maintain the regenerative processes of the NTRW. And it’s led me to question if the lack of continuous ritual on our end could have a degradation of things for the NTRW. It brings us back to the age old issue of “if we think this is really real, and if we believe the Egyptians did things for a Reason that they also believed was really real, then why am I casually ignoring doing that?”

Because if the rituals did actually influence the quality of life for our gods, or if the rituals did actually help to keep the Duat regular and functional, then it really begs us to ask what would happen if those rituals stopped. And by extension, why we don’t do more of them.

And I’m really stuck on that.

So far, I do think I want to create something that strikes a balance between traditional ritual work and what I did in December. For me, it makes more sense to find something that fits into what I am capable of right now, and then build towards something that is more refined as I learn more from my experiences. That being said, I’m still not entirely sure what that looks like, or how I want to approach it.

I guess we’ll see what 2020 brings on that front.

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For those of you who participated in either project, I would love to hear your feedback or thoughts so that I can incorporate them into any future projects that may occur.

 

Eating a Mystery

A few weeks ago I was getting ready for my shower when I suddenly got this memo that went something like “don’t forget that you need to be preparing for the Mysteries this year.” It struck me as odd, since I haven’t really done anything for the Year of Rites since October, and for the NTRW to not harp me on that, but instead decide I needed to perform the Mysteries really seemed out of character.

I asked the “memo” what I needed to focus on for the Mysteries, and I received one line, it said “Glorify your father.”

In the matter of a few seconds, my brain raced in several directions with this. First off, the word father really seemed highlighted to me, and there are two reasons for that. First is the mythological component. Osiris’ myths are frequently centered on Horus and his quest to avenge his father and take back what’s his. Second, you’ve got the historical context in that every Osiris relies on his eldest son to give him a proper funeral and to maintain his cult to at least some degree. Both of these aspects would place me in the role of Horus glorifying my father, and have fairly straight-forward heka connotations.

But what really caught me was the third place my brain went.

While I understand that the NTRW can use familial terms for some people, it’s never been the case for me. Further, if there was a NTR out there that I would use familial terms with, it certainly isn’t Osiris. But there is another person that frequently gets labeled specifically as father (as opposed to “dad” or some other similar label, it’s always father) and that would be good ol’ Father-Lover. Would I need to incorporate aspects of my rebirth/rebuilding process into this? Or perhaps more accurately — had the NTRW decided to insert themselves into my process without letting me know? I wasn’t pleased with the idea.

Between all of these concepts, though, there is one vein of similarities: you become your father.

Ultimately, the reason Osiris gets it on with Aset is largely to make sure that he continues on through his son. Ultimately, the son and father overlap and become one mythologically speaking (hence Bull of His Mother) and so in some respects, I would argue that you could potentially interchange the two to some extent. And when it comes to Father-Lover, well, its just that we are literally the same being spread across two forms. We are ultimately one and the same on some level or another.

So I began to mull on this. If glorifying my father ultimately ends up glorifying myself… what would glorification look like? The word “glorify” means to praise or present admirably, perhaps unjustifiably so. It is what nearly every Kemetic ritual aims to do — to beautify the NTRW in the hopes that they will remain gracious to us. It is also through this process of glorification that we ensure that the rhythmic needs of the Duat are sustained and maintained. Re needs to go into the Duat each night, he needs to push back a/pep each day, he and Osiris need to meet in order to revitalize the Duat and its residents. Just like nature, everything has a rhythm and a cycle. Part of our end of the deal is performing the rituals and doing the acts that sustain these cycles.

To consider this concept on myself, we all need a healthy attitude about ourselves. We would all lead more fulfilling and less-miserable lives if many of us weren’t constantly being self-defeating or putting ourselves down. To glorify yourself would ultimately mean to feed into your inherent regenerative nature. And so I asked myself what would help sustain me most?

I then switched back to considering the historical contexts of glorifying your father — what do akhu value most from their families? What do we often see most often for helping the akhu? And the answer I came back with was:

The voice offering, in my opinion, is the quintessential akhu rite out there. There are lots of people who know nothing about Kemeticism, but know about the “thousands of beer, bread, and every good thing” voice offering that was left to the akhu of the necropolis. The most important thing a son could do for his father was to offer the basic necessities of life so that his father could continue to live in the Duat. And when I think about what the best offering that you could give would be, I thought of the foreleg. The foreleg is, by far, the piece de resistance in the Opening the Mouth ceremony. Everything in the ritual crescendos when you pull out the choice cut of meat and offer all of its contained vitality to the statue/mummy.

I thought to myself, could I offer myself the foreleg instead? Could I offer it to both of us simultaneously?

One of the suggestions after my post about my eating issues interfering with being able to offer to the gods regularly was the idea of drawing foods, and offering the drawing. In response to this, I began to offer my paper foreleg amulet to the NTRW as a stand-in meal. And so the connection between the foreleg and the offering of foods went full circle, and I thought to myself “what if I offer a meal to myself every day? So that instead of doing offerings at a shrine that are couched inside of a larger ritual, the act of feeding myself becomes the ritual.” And in response, I heard “what if you did it three times per day?” (since, you know, we’re supposed to eat three meals a day.)

So I guess that means I’m eating three times per day for the Mysteries.

I admit, this is strange to me. It feels like a cop out, like I’m just using something I “already do,” and saying that it’s a good replacement for “proper rituals” at a shrine, as I have been doing all year. But to cite that post I mentioned above: I don’t really eat regularly. Or at least, I don’t eat as regularly as I should. So it’s actually quite a challenge for me, since I won’t be able to eat depression meals and call it a day. Even though it feels like a cop out, it’s going to actually be a challenge for me to do this for any length of time.

I decided I needed to check through other means to make sure that I was on the right track, and the response I got was so direct and straightforward that it was hard to deny the answer, so I guess this means I’m eating three times per day for the Mysteries. Which O dictated that it’s to be a month, as it’s always been. So I’m eating three times per day for a month. I’m sure that’ll be riddled with success.

The general idea of how this is supposed to go is that I’m to treat each meal as an event that requires my full attention. I’m to focus on myself, the food I’m eating, and try not to let myself get super distracted by the Internet, my phone, thoughts, or what have you. The meals need to have enough substance to them that they can be called meals. So for example, just eating a piece of bread and walking away is not good enough. It needs to big enough to fill me up (a challenge.)

The biggest question I am left with when it comes to doing this is the following: when we typically do rituals, there is a layer of separation involved. You offer to the gods, separate from you, and then you take the food into yourself afterwards. The path is outwards (to the gods) then inwards (when you eat it.) But what happens when you skip the outwards part? What happens when both the offering and the consuming are done in one step, at the same time, with both parties being overlapped? And is O doing this because he wants me to take care of myself, or is he wanting me to do this because of the overlap I just mentioned?

I guess we’ll see.

 

Ancient Egyptians Didn’t Have Disordered Eating

If there is a problem that has plagued my ritual work for years, it’s my disordered eating. And while I know that there is no absolute way to determine whether ancient Egypt had disordered eating present or not, I feel pretty confident in my guess that it wasn’t a prolific problem, if it existed at all. For those of you who are unaware, disordered eating is technically a sort of eating disorder, its just that there isn’t a particular name for the way that your eating is not healthy or “normal.” Many people have disordered eating and don’t realize it — potentially as many as 3 out of every 4 Americans have it, and for many of us, its a byproduct of our mental health and the unhealthy culture that we’re forced to live in.

For me specifically, my disordered eating is often a byproduct of my depression and stress levels. When my depression skyrockets in a particular way, I often don’t feel like eating — even if I’m hungry. Most things sound completely unappetizing, and when I force myself to eat I often end up with stomach aches or meltdowns as a result. This, of course, is a problem if you’re doing ritual work because our ritual structure mandates that you offer something to eat to the NTRW. I have yet to see a single Kemetic ritual that doesn’t include food offerings as a staple chapter.

And I mean, why not? Food is great (I guess?), it’s what keeps us alive, and supposedly the NTRW help us to grow is so that we can sustain ourselves with it. But it’s a huge problem if you can’t bring yourself to eat.

Years ago, I sought to bypass the disordered eating by using votive offerings instead. I bought a bunch of ReMent and used that to fill my offering plates for many many years. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to eat, I could bring myself to give the NTRW replicas of what I was supposed to be eating. I could offer them more in terms of number and quantity than I could ever do with actual food. It allowed me to let go of the stress around food and just focus on being present.

Of course, people did not like the idea. I’ve read everything from “that’s half-assing it” to “if you give the NTRW ‘fake’ offerings, they’ll give you fake blessings in return.” And so I’ve always ended up having a mixed relationship with my votive offerings because years and years of being told that they aren’t good enough will eventually leave you feeling like they aren’t good enough.

And so when I finally could eat again, because my health issues had reached a certain level of improvement, I told myself that I should try to use real food and not votive offerings. I created a sort of “rule” in my head that votive offerings are only for people who can’t offer “real” food (not that I’d ever place that rule on someone else. It was only ever directed at me.) And so I packed them away and tried not to use them. Fast forward a few years to my Year of Rites project where I told myself I would use real food for the entire thing because I knew I should eat, could eat, and needed to eat. And therefore, should try to use my ritual work to motivate myself to eat better and regularly.

And I guess it’s worked so far. If you read through what few updates I’ve given, or parse through the images that I used to take, you’ll see that offerings were still a problem for me. I can’t tell you how many rituals get put off until the end of the day because I couldn’t force myself to cook or eat early enough to do things at a reasonable time, or how many times I just grabbed a piece of convenience snacking material to offer instead. But the more important point is that I was managing up until August.

I want to preface this with a certain level of “I knew this would happen.”

As my grandfather lay on his death bed, I could overhear my mother telling the handful of people that were there with us that she really wanted to make sure that people checked up on me for the next few weeks. She was worried that I would fall apart after he died, and seemingly was trying to be proactive or something. I remember trying to meet these people halfway, letting them know that my depression would likely stave itself for a month or two, and that if people were really concerned, they’d make sure that they came around in a month or two, because that’s when I’d likely actually need the help. My emotions take time to process. My disassociation takes time to wear off so that I can feel what I’m actually feeling.

It took a while to kick in, but I noticed that by the end of August, my eating was beginning to slip. I blamed it on a new medical protocol I was trying, and hoped that my appetite would return.

But it hasn’t. And I’m not really surprised about it. Just as I had told those people — it takes time for my grief to process, and so the depression took a bit to really settle in.

Each day that there is a ritual scheduled, I feel this sort of dread or aversion in my stomach. To know that not only do I need to come up with something to offer the gods, I need to actually eat it, and I need to prepare it at such a time that I will have the time to perform the ritual, but also won’t lose my desire to eat whatever it is by the time my ritual work is done (for example, if I take a break while eating, I often lose all desire to finish my meals. I eat to reduce my stomach pain, and once that’s even mildly resolved, I often quit eating.)

When you combine this with how much I absolutely can’t stand this last batch of rubrics I made, you’ve got a recipe for not doing many rituals. So far I’ve only missed three rites this year (they were all execrations. Execrations feel like the world’s biggest waste of time and involve finding a place to start a fire and smelling like smoke and I’d just rather not most days,) but I can tell that this last quarter will be the hardest because I hate the words and I hate the food. There are other factors at play as well, but I still feel that these are the largest components to why I’m avoidant of doing ritual work right now.

So this begs to ask — what does one do about this? After this year’s worth of work, I honestly have a lot of criticism of people’s assumptions about how rituals should be set up, how often one should be able to do them, what they should consist of, how much we should be maintaining ancient practices, etc. But even if we don’t get into analyzing traditional ideas of what Kemetic rituals entail, it still really needs to be asked: what do we do about disordered eating? It’s quite clear that the ancient Egyptians didn’t have this particular hurdle to overcome, and so it’s something that we modern practitioners need to answer for ourselves, and possibly for our community.

Votive offerings seemed to be a solid alternative, but at the same time, there is a lot of moral baggage that comes with using them. You risk being ostracized or criticized by your fellows, and that just leads to more dysfunction for a person. The other alternative is to not offer food at all, or perhaps give only a voice offering — but both of these are also rife with chastisement and belittling within our community (have I mentioned recently how much I hate our community? I hope this post gives a little peek as to some of the reasons why) and I know that I often feel like voice offerings are not “enough.” It would feel weird to sit at my shrine and just say words and not perform any ritual actions that mirror the words. So, from what I can tell, no clear alternative exists that won’t evoke feelings of shame because it results in at least a portion of our community putting someone down for using it or doing it.

So I ask you all, how do we get around this? What is the best solution? How do we modify ritual structures for modern problems such as this? Is there even an alternative that anyone can take that doesn’t result in being shat on? Because so far, the answer feels a lot like a no.

 

September Rubrics

We are in the final stretch of the calendar year, and with it, the final batch of rubrics for the year of rites project. I’ve experimented with some different methods in a few of this round’s rituals. I had read a paper about a translation of a daily offering meal from a limestone ostrakon, and in it, it discusses the benefit of using repetition within ritual structure. Since most of my rubrics have only lightly utilized repetition (if I’m honest, because I felt like I was half-assing if I decided to repeat a line four times instead of writing four unique lines,) I decided to give it a go to see how I like it. If you find you prefer one style over the other, let me know, as I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I got rid of the purification of the ritual area because I got tired of slopping water all over my offering plate. If you’d like to keep that in, feel free to take one of the variations from an earlier rubric and throw it in after “Opening the Shrine” and before “Offering Light.”

This round’s akhu rite also utilizes a foreleg as an offering. I will be making 2D version, similar to my ma’at offerings. If you don’t have the capacity to come up with a foreleg to offer, you can do just the voice offering, or omit it entirely.

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Making Ma’at

Opening the Shrine

O you dwellers in the sunshine, who bask daily in the glories of Re,
Prepare the paths for me, open for me the gates which are among the Coiled One’s,
for I know the circuit of Re and of those who are with him.
Prepare a path for me, for I am indeed alive, the heir of eternity, who passes everlasting, whom Re has placed over you.
I have seen the doubles, and the fire that goes forth, O you spirits, prepare a path for me.
Prepare a path for me, so that the fire can guide me to the place where the retinue resides.

See, you Lord of All, you who is hale, see that I have come to you.
See, you Lord of All, see with your right eye that I have come to you.
See, you Lord of All, see with your left eye that I have come to you.
See, you Lord of All, who is encompassed in beauty, see that I am before you here and now.
[open the shrine]
Awake in peace, Great God, awake in peace.
Gather yourself up and greet the new day, awake in peace.
Feel the fresh air in your divine nostrils, awake in peace.
You who makes ma’at to flourish, rise up to greet ma’at upon this day and awake in peace.

Offering Light

Greetings to you, О eye of Horus, you beacon of totality; glorious and sound
Greetings to you, О eye of Horus, who shines like Re in the double horizon.
Greetings to you, O eye of Horus, who shines in every shrine that is within the Two Lands.
Shine brightly, you eye of Horus. Extend your light over all of the Two Lands,
Shine brightly, you eye of Horus. Extend your light so that all can see.
Shine brightly, you eye of Horus. Extend your light so that ma’at prevails.

I present to you, O Lord of All, this eye of Horus, shining and complete.
O you ruler of the gods, take to this eye of Horus.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that you may be content because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and open your eyes with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Water

I present you with water, for breath is in my nose;
I present you with water, for breath is in your nose;
I present you with water, for it rejuvenates your body;
I present you with water, for it quenches your thirst;

O Shining One, take to this eye of Horus.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that your thirst may be quenched because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and part your lips with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Food

I bring to you your subsistence, a bounty that rejuvenates your form.
I bring to you all of the offerings that your heart desires.
Come to this subsistence, come to this bounty that will rejuvenate your form.
Come to these offerings, come to what your heart desires.

O you sole jackal in the sky, take to this eye of Horus.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that your hunger may be sated because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and part your lips with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Ma’at

I raise up ma’at to you, O Lord of everything, take her to you.
Ma’at will be with you, in every place where you are.
Ma’at is in your presence, Lord of All, she is with you at all hours and all times.
Take your beloved daughter; she loves you, she does not withdraw from you.
Take your beloved daughter; She is your throat that fills your body,
Take your beloved daughter; she is your gullet that leads the food to your stomach;
Take your beloved daughter; for beautiful ma’at is yours great lord, you live from her, you breathe from her.
She is yours forever.

Take to this eye of Horus, Great God.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, it is yours forever.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Reversion of Offerings

O Shining One, your enemies have fallen and no longer exist.
Everything is renewed and restored throughout the Two Lands through the work of our hands.
Take these offerings to yourself as I take these offerings to myself in the name of reversion of offerings.
Release these offerings to your servant, so that I may partake of what you partake of.
So that I might be shining and whole as the NTRW.

---

Akhu

Opening the Shrine

O Shu, make a way for me, for I am he who restored Osiris.
I am one who has seen the Weary One in his time of suffering.
I have come and I have removed the weariness from him, as his Companions do.
I am one in the entourage of Osiris, one who goes by night and returns by day, do not repulse me upon your path,
For I have power in my foot, and I have traversed the ways that only the kites know so that I may glorify the soul of my father on this day.

I have come the pillared hall so that I may see you, great god,
I have come to you as Nehebkau to bestow divinities upon you, and to glorify your soul
which is equipped and divine; it shines as Re, it travels as Hathor, and all that you see is yours.
O Osiris, Osiris, see that I have come to you in order to set your movements in order.
O Osiris, Osiris, make a path for me on this day, for I am one who surpasses mortal men and knows your secrets,
O Osiris, Osiris, make a path for me on this day, for I am one in the entourage of Osiris,
One who goes by night and returns by day, do not repulse me upon your path,

[Open Shrine]

Awake in peace, Bull of the West, awake in peace.
Rise up and be full of life, for you are not dead.
Awake in peace, Bull of the West, awake in peace.
Raise yourself up with both of your arms
and receive these bounties of yours that have been provided for you.
Awake in peace, Bull of the West, awake in peace.
Betake yourself to me, be near to me, for I am your son Horus.
Awake in peace, Bull of the West, awake in peace.
As I enclose you within the arms of your mother Nut,
So that you may be enduring.
Awake in peace, Bull of the West, awake in peace.

Offering Light

The light of Horus shines on the horizon, his light shines for the weary ones in all of their places.
See the eye of Horus. glorious, sound and in peace.
See the eye of Horus shining like Re in the horizon.
See the eye of Horus as it drives away your the enemies.
See the eye of Horus as its light shines for you.

Come to this torch, O Weary One, it confers its protection upon you.
Come to this torch, O Weary One, which makes a light for your ka,
Come to this torch, O Weary One, which illuminates the night after the day, the eye of Horus appearing radiant in this shrine.
Come to this torch, O Weary One, which appears radiant on your forehead.
Take to yourself this eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Water

I bring you this water which flows forth from the Two Caverns for you,
I bring you this water, which cleanses your temples and restores your body.
Take of this Water, O Osiris. Take this water to you.
Quench your thirst with your efflux. Quench your thirst through the waters of the Nile.
I have brought to you the Eye of Horus so that you will not be thirsty
I have brought to you the Eye of Horus so that your lips will not be dry.
I have brought to you the Eye of Horus so that you may feed on it just as Horus fed on it.
I have brought to you the Eye of Horus so that you may renew your youth in peace.

Offering Food

I bring to you your subsistence, a bounty that rejuvenates your form.
I bring to you all of the offerings that your heart desires.
Come to this subsistence, come to this bounty that will rejuvenate your form.
Come to these offerings, come to what your heart desires.

O you ba among the akhs, take to this eye of Horus.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that your hunger may be sated because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and part your lips with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Foreleg

I have crossed the sky as the Lion on the day of butchery for you to bring to you what you desire.
I have separated the foreleg for you, you Lord of Life.
I have traversed the Two Lands with it, so that I may bring it to you.
Take the foreleg to you, beautiful one, take it to you so that it will revitalize your ka.
Take to this eye of Horus, Great God.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the strength in the eye of Horus.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Ma’at

I raise up ma’at to reside with you, she takes her place in every place where you are.
Ma’at is in your presence, she is with you at all hours and all times.
Take your beloved ma’at; she loves you, she does not withdraw from you.
Take your beloved ma’at; She is your throat that fills your body,
Take your beloved ma’at; she is your gullet that leads the food to your stomach;
Take your beloved ma’at; for she is with you great lord, you live from her, you breathe from her.

Take to this eye of Horus, Great God.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, it is yours forever.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Reversion of Offerings

O Weary One, your enemies have fallen and no longer exist.
Everything is renewed and restored throughout the Two Lands through the work of our hands.
Take these offerings to yourself as I take these offerings to myself in the name of reversion of offerings.
Release these offerings to your servant, so that I may partake of what you partake of.
So that I might be shining and whole as the NTRW.

---

Propitiation

Opening the Shrine

O you Protector of the land, rise within the horizon, and take control of the sky that is yours.
You make the Two Lands content through the work of your hands, your joy is for you.
The hearts of both of the Enneads are content when they see you filled with joy,
See that you are in the midst of your entourage and supporters, and so your joy is for you.

O hearts of the Enneads, you who are filled with contentment on this day,
Prepare a path for me so that I may pass by.
I know this path well, for it leads to my mistress, the Great Gold.
The Sistrum-player is in my body, and the scent of my mother calls to me.
O hearts of the Enneads, you know the joy that issues forth when she is propitiated and firm upon her seat.
Prepare a path for the equipped spirit in me,
For I have prepared a path to the place where Re is, to the place where Hathor is.
So that I may make manifest the beauty of my goddess.

[open shrine]

I kiss the earth as the sight of your beauty, O Great Gold
I worship my mistress, for I have seen her beauty;
I bring these bounties to my mistress, for I have seen her beauty;
I give praise to Hathor, for I have seen her beauty.
She appears here in this place before me, your shape is distinguished above the gods, and I see your beauty.

Offering Light

I strike the flint to light the way ahead for you, Great Gold.
I strike the flint to ensure that there is always a light shining in your shrines.
I strike the flint that brings the fire that drives away the enemies of the Two Lands
I strike the flint so that there will always be light to see the way.

Take this light to yourself and be cleansed by it.
Take this light to yourself and be made pure by it.
Take this light to yourself and be made whole by it.
Take this light to yourself and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Water

I present you with water, it brings brilliance to your ka;
I present you with water, it is what flows forth from you;
I present you with water, it rejuvenates your body;
I present you with water, it quenches your thirst;

O Shining One, take to this eye of Horus.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that your thirst may be quenched because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and part your lips with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Food

I bring to you your subsistence, your nourishment, your ka.
Your divinities are for you, come to them and take them to yourself.
Take to these your offerings, filled with what you love.
I appease your heart with what you love, for your majesty is great when you are filled with joy.

Truly, your heart becomes green when you take this Eye to you.
Truly, your heart becomes green when you are renewed because of your eye.
Truly, your heart becomes green when your hunger is sated because of it.
Truly, your heart becomes green when you part your lips with it.
Truly, your heart becomes green when you renew your youth in peace.

Offering Ma’at

I raise up Ma’at to you, behold Ma’at as the fiery Eye of Horus, take her to you.
Your Ma’at is for you, O Protector, Ma’at is with you in every place where you are, she destroys all who stand against her.
Ma’at is in your presence, she is with you at all hours and all times.
Take your beloved Ma’at; she loves you, she does not withdraw from you.
Take your beloved Ma’at; She is your throat that fills your body,
Take your beloved Ma’at; she is your magic, which is effective;
Take your beloved Ma’at; she is your essence, you live from her, you breathe from her.
She is yours forever.

Take to this eye of Horus, Bountiful Goddess.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, it is yours forever.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Reversion of Offerings

O you Glittering Gold, your enemies have fallen and no longer exist.
Everything is renewed and restored throughout the Two Lands through the work of our hands.
Take these offerings to yourself as I take these offerings to myself in the name of reversion of offerings.
Release these offerings to your servant, so that I may partake of what you partake of.
So that I might be shining and whole as the NTRW.

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Execration

Be seated Great Gods, in the presence of Geb, the chiefest of the netjeru
For I am Horus, with ma’at upon my brow.
Aset bore me, Khebet raised me, Set served me over and above his own powers,
and Osiris has given me both of his staffs as proof of my Power.
I am at the Head of the Enneads. I am at the head of my father, and at the head of the living.
I have taken control of the Two Lands as Horus the Lord of Justice,
and I stop the movements of those who threaten the netjeru or their followers.

O you of whom the Double Lion is afraid, see that I see you, hiding inside the Cavern of the Rebel.
You have uttered rebellion against Ma’at
You have created discord throughout the Two Lands, which are guarded by the Great Demolisher.
A light has been kindled against you in the Mansions of Sepa,
And you will be destroyed upon this day.

Get back, you watchful one, who changes shape, who conveys away souls, who drags away hearts;
Be destroyed, for I am Geb, chiefest of the gods, and Atum, Lord of being, and I have power over you.
The power of the Hidden One acts as proxy for me, Ptah stands up for me, and I have power over you.
My champion is Thoth, his strength is in my arm, his might is in my mouth, and I have power over you.
I have taken possession of the might of Atum; and I have power over you.
I go on my feet, my speech is in my mouth when I smite my foes,
I have come against this foe of mine, who has been given to me
and you will not escape from me; for I have power over you.

Anyone on heaven or earth who shall stand against ma’at, my magic will drive them off.
The fire will go up, the flame will go up from the bellies of those who creep,
and the fiery one will be against them as the Eye of Re.

*Take up your piece of paper, this is where you get to yell at it, stomp on it, tear it up, light it on fire, etc. Follow the prompts in the rubric or do what you feel. Get cathartic.*

Get back a/pep, get back you rebel of Ra
O Bowel, be destroyed before Ra, for I know the evil that you create.
The knife of the execution-block is in your flesh!
Taste the cutting of the Great God!
Your head is cut off! Your body is cut into pieces!
You are powerless against my Effectiveness!
Be spat upon oh enemy of ma’at!
Feel the weight of my legs as my foot crushes your body.
Flames cut into your face! Fire consumes your soul!

Wither and rot from the magic in my mouth!
Be put to the fire and be destroyed! Be fallen and crushed!
Thoth’s fingers are in your eyes and his magic has laid hold of you.
Your form is annihilated, your shape is destroyed in all of its places and forms.
You are rendered impotent, your soul does not exist.
Your seat does not exist. Your children do not exist.
You are utterly destroyed in every place.

__

Opening the Shrine

I have come down into the land of the Silent One,
I have been equipped because of the vulture and the favor she has for me.
I am Khopri who came into being of himself upon his mother’s lap;
See, this magic of mine has been brought to me; I have gathered together this magic of mine
Wherever the foe stood, I was quicker than a hound; speedier than Shu.
Wherever the foe stood, my magic was effective and exacting.

O you entourage of Re, I have driven off the rebel, I have made A/pep impotent,
O you NTRW, I protected you and have shut fast the jaws of your foes;
I have seized him who would take you to his place of slaughter.
Your protection comes to you and your son Sopd the sharp-toothed acts as protector from whoever would harm you.
Your heavens are established and your cities are firmly rooted.
The Two Lands are in joy, and the hearts of all of the NTRW are glad
for a/pep has fallen into the fire.
All of the foes of all of the NTRW are fallen.
All of the NTRW are triumphant over their enemies.
I stand behind the NTRW and make their arms strong
so that their enemies may be destroyed, as I have on this day.

Offering Light

Be mighty, be mighty, О eye of Horus!
Be mighty over isfet in every place that it resides, that enemy who has wrought great evil,
It is your fire that burns his limbs,
It is your fire that burns his flesh,
It is your fire that eradicates his form, in every place he resides.
It is your fire that destroys him entirely, in your name, the Eye of Horus.

I offer you this eye of Horus, you glorious NTRW.
This eye of Horus alights in every shrine that is your, in every place that is yours.
Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that you may be content because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and open your mouth with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Water

Your water is yours, your flood is yours, being abundant.
Raise yourself, receive these waters from me, your servant.
I pour for you the primordial water to satisfy your statue;
I pour for you the primordial water to satisfy your thirst;
I pour for you the primordial water to satisfy your body;
I have brought you this Eye of Horus and placed it at your feet.

Take to yourself when you take the eye of Horus that is before you
Take to yourself that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus that your thirst may be quenched because of it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and part your lips with it.
Take to yourself the eye of Horus, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Food

A/pep has fallen and his meat is on the fire,
I offer his fat to you, see that his fat is on the fire.
I offer his fat to you, so that it may sate your hunger.
I offer his confederates to you, see their bones beneath your feet.
I offer his confederates to you, see that they do not exist.

Take this sustenance to you, allow it to fill your belly and fuel your body.
Take this sustenance to you, so that you may be renewed because of your eye.
Take this sustenance to you, that your hunger may be sated because of it.
Take this sustenance to you, and renew your youth in peace.

Offering Ma’at

Behold Ma’at as the fiery Eye of Horus.
Her exacting justice has cast out the rebels, and her magics were exacting in the bodies of your foes.
I raise up Ma’at to you, O you glorious Enneads, take her to you.
Your Ma’at is for you, O Great Gods, Ma’at is with you in every place where you are, she destroys all who stand against her.
Her fire has gone out, sought out the rebels, and her flame has destroyed them.
Truly, your enemies are destroyed, and Ma’at triumphs in your space.

Ma’at is in your presence, she is with you at all hours and all times.
Take your beloved Ma’at; she loves you, she does not withdraw from you.
Take your beloved Ma’at; She is your throat that fills your body,
Take your beloved Ma’at; she is your gullet that leads the food to your stomach;
Take your beloved Ma’at; for beautiful ma’at is yours, you live from her, you breathe from her.
She is yours forever.

Reversion of Offerings

O you NTRW, your enemies have fallen and no longer exist.
Everything is renewed and restored throughout the Two Lands through the work of our hands.
Take these offerings to yourself as I take these offerings to myself in the name of reversion of offerings.
Release these offerings to your servant, so that I may partake of what you partake of.
So that I might be shining and whole as the NTRW.

 

Ma’at was Always Political

This week sat received an ask, wherein the inquirer states that “Ma’at was made so political.” It really stuck out to me, because as far as I can tell, ma’at was always political. When you look at the definition of “politics,” at the very very bottom, you get “use of intrigue or strategy in obtaining any position of power or control, as in business, university, etc.” which might seem antithetical to ma’at, right?

I don’t know many folks who would think it is within ma’at to “obtain any positions of power or control.” I say this because it’s not uncommon for members of our community to assume that anyone with any amount of social following or clout is somehow looking to become a megalomaniac or a cult leader. The mistrust that our community has with power is warranted, but it’s not historically informed when it comes to ma’at itself.

Ma’at is intrinsically tied to kingship in ancient Egypt. There are no two ways around that, and I don’t think I should have to lay out historical data to prove that the king used legitimacy and ritual to show the whole of Egypt that he was the divine ruler, the Horus here on earth that was meant to maintain ma’at for the entire country. So if we’re looking from a historical aspect, ma’at is defacto tied to politics. Sometimes ma’at was used to do good things, like help members of other countries in need, and other times she was used to do bad things, like start wars to gain control of people’s resources.

Of course, just because ma’at was tied to politics in the past doesn’t mean that it has to be tied to politics now, right? Well, I think it depends on what you’re cherry picking from our resources in order to form your argument. To make it easy, let’s pick one of the most widely-accepted tenets of ma’at: giving food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, a boat to the boatless. All three of these things are considered very ma’atian acts to perform. Did you know that giving food to the hungry is an arrestable offense in many places? Same goes for clothing, if you’re giving it to the wrong person. Your “not political” act just suddenly got political. It’s almost as if living under an authoritative government means that politics has a say over almost all aspects of your life, it’s shocking.

So that got me thinking, if anon wasn’t trying to say that ma’at was political, what else could they be trying to say?

If I’m being honest, I don’t think it’s that our anonymous asker was somehow lost on the fact that ma’at was originally political, no. I think it’s that this anonymous asker believes that people like me are politicizing ma’at, which is a very subtle, but important distinction. Because when most people think you’re politicizing something, they believe that you are taking something and trying to use it to gain power and promote a specific bias.

You see this in our society through things like the anti-vaxx movement, climate change, reproductive rights, etc. where a particular group tries to call into question the validity of data or information presented about a topic by going “but they’re trying to politicize it so that they can push their [inaccurate] bias.” What’s interesting is that most of these things are slanted towards the right side of the political spectrum. Which is to say that it’s mostly right-leaning people who have taken these topics that apply to everyone, and decided that they’re not actually that important to fight, fix, or fund. But instead of being honest about it, its sexier to imply that the “other side” is just politicizing (read: lying about) the whole thing. Yes, these things could be considered inherently unpolitical, but because of the world we live in, they are anything but.

So ultimately, when you see someone trying to tell someone else that they’re politicizing something that isn’t “inherently political,” you’re likely watching someone indirectly try to shut down the conversation about a topic (because it makes them uncomfortable.) To pull a good quote (cw: rape mention, victim blaming used as an example):

Words like “political” then are a means of controlling when (perhaps even if) we will allow discussion of some issues and what the nature of that discussion can be. Silence on issues like homosexual rights, sexual assault, climate change, and war all promote the status quo. If we don’t talk about homosexuals, then they remain deviant. If we don’t talk about sexual assault, then it remains a private problem of a few isolated women (who might have been “asking for it” anyway). If we don’t talk about climate change, then we can keep consuming and polluting without feelings of guilt. If we don’t talk about war, then the gears can keep spinning. In addition, by limiting tax-exempt organizations to discussing things that are “not political”, we keep them from pointing to problems in society as the cause of the issues they address. They can feed the hungry, but they can’t call for the end of the root cause of hunger in an extremely wealthy nation: wealth inequality. (x)

And therein lies the crux of the problem. Our anonymous asker is assuming that people like me have taken ma’at, an innocent pure bystander, and turned it into a weapon to convert people to our way of thinking. But the truth of the matter is, ma’at has always been what she is, and most of those who aren’t living on a couch of privilege understand that that means she’s political and that the concept ends up being inherently politicized. If anything, I didn’t change ma’at, ma’at changed me — which is how its supposed to work when you convert to a religion.

Existence is inherently political for all of us (only if you care about the health and well-being of other people, of course.) Our governments can, and will, do horrible things to people if left unchecked. We are all overseen by governmental structures that can do said horrid things, so to be able to be blind about what is going on on a governmental level (aka “not political”) is a luxury that only the most protected members of society can rely (aka rich white people, if you’re living in America.) There is a phrase that says that the ability to “not be political” is a sign of privilege, and this is exactly why. There is only a small, narrow portion of our community that isn’t a part of a marginalized group, and as such, it should be a given that politics will bleed into discussions on how best to live one’s life in ma’at. The marginalized members of our community shouldn’t be asked to hide parts of their lived experience simply because more-privileged members of our community are being made uncomfortable. Nor should they be forced to share their religious community with people who deny their (marginalized people) lived experience simply because they don’t want to explore how their own inherent bigotry is actually bad and should be changed.

So in conclusion, if we are to use ma’at to inform our decision-making and actions in our lives, and if most of us are living inherently politicized lives, then it stands to reason that ma’at was destined to be tied to politics, even in the modern era. Yes, you can choose to ignore this fact because it makes you uncomfortable, but I think the bigger question should be: why would you want to?

 

Isfet as a System

Before you read this post, you absolutely have to read part one first. Otherwise, nothing will really make sense.

In the last post in this series, I left off with discussing why ma’at should be considered a regenerative system, but in order to explain why we should view ma’at in this fashion, we really need to discuss isfet, and then place both concepts side by side in order to see how they function together. In many ways, in order to understand one, I feel you really need to look at both at the same time.

So to get this started, let’s talk about the harbinger of degeneration: disorder.

The role of disorder

Ironically, we have a definition for disorder within natural systems: any resource that can not be used productively by an organism. That is to say, if you get too much of a Thing, even if its a Really Good Thing, you are being thrown into disorder. In terms of keeping natural systems healthy, any natural system really needs to have moderation in all of its parameters, which often times will be summed up as “a healthy level of stress.” Key word here being: healthy. In the same way that our muscles atrophy without use, other parts of systems begin to fall apart if they are never remotely pushed, challenged, or introduced to change (in nature, this usually is changing of seasons, fauna, etc.)

You can see what disorder in natural systems looks like by looking at the weather patterns of 2019. The midwest got too much rain and too much snow. The southwest hasn’t gotten enough heat or rain. Texas has gotten too much rain too early, and is not getting enough now. All of these are examples of ecosystems getting too much or too little of a resource; they are all examples of regenerative systems rubbing against disorder (which is a nice way of saying climate change.)

Too much of something will always result in disorder. Disorder and dysfunction are the gateways to a regenerative system becoming degenerative (isfet.)

We see this time and time again within our own mythological stories, where excess often results in harm or bad things happening, even if what you’re excessing on is not inherently bad. For example, Re’s excessive fear and pride led to his releasing his Eye out onto the world. Her excessive blood lust caused a lot of destruction that Re then had to go and remedy (with more excess — drinking, in this case.) Osiris got a big ol welt on his head from his Atef crown because he was being so vane and arrogant.

When viewed from this lens, it stands to reason why Set often gets classified as necessary chaos or necessary change (he is also a god of excess, showing that the NTRW can also waver in terms of their own balance and moderation.) As I mentioned above, systems need to be pushed sometimes in order to stay healthy. Nothing lives in a vacuum, and so all systems must continually grow and adapt to the ever-changing world around them. When properly handled and balanced, the chaos that Set brings is supposed to be this sort of stress that allows things to grow into something more than they currently are. When the deceased talks about Set “serving [me] above and beyond his own powers,” they are talking about the fact that Set’s service to all of us is supposed to be that useful, healthy stress that pushes us to level up.

The problem is, we don’t live in a healthy regenerative system, and so this disorder often hits harder than it should, and if left unchecked, it becomes very easy for a regenerative system to recoil from any contact with any disorder, ultimately pushing it closer and closer towards becoming degenerative.

Isfet: degeneration in action

If you are continually given more of a Thing than you can handle, it results in disorder within a system or systems. Disorder is what happens when we stray from the moderation and predictable cycling of nature that is necessary to maintain all regenerative and natural systems. In this respect, frequent or constant disorder is a symptom, a warning sign that you’re beginning to slide into isfetian territory. That something within your system is not jiving with some other aspect of another system, and as a result, the quality and health of that system is slowly shifting towards becoming degenerative.

For better or worse, it’s pretty easy to map out what a system starts to do when it begins to slide into degeneration:

1. Reduction of predictable cycles and resources, causing general disorder within the system.
2. As general disorder increases, lack of proper synchronization between members of the system occurs, exacerbating the resource distribution further.
3. Lack of resources leads to excessive stress on all organisms in the systems
4. Critical mass is reached, and parts of the ecosystem begin to collapse, biodiversity begins to drop.
5. Reduction of keystone species causes widespread collapse. A single member of a keystone species often supports (usually) hundreds-to-thousands of other organisms at any given time.
6. Once keystone species begin to disappear, the entire system faces a reduction of resiliency overall. If left unchecked, the system will completely disappear or become “dead” for all intents and purposes.

To see how this sort of situation pans out in real time, all you need to do is look at climate change and desertification. Human activity has caused too much stress to be put onto too many natural systems, and now those systems are slowly (and yet oh-so-quickly) shifting into disorder. As the disorder increases, the cycles that mark stable regenerative systems become more and more out of alignment and out of sync. From there, systems begin to fail. Forests turn into scrub land, scrub land into desert, desert into dunes. The soil supports less and less plant growth, so less and less organisms can be supported by the same amount of land. You get increasingly bad natural disasters and you begin to have winter in May.

For examples on a smaller scale, it’s that moment when you grab a cigarette instead of handling your feelings. It’s when you stay up late on your phone instead of going to bed at a healthy time, or choose to escape into the television instead of handling problems. It’s all of those small little things that detract from our overall well being that we do because we think its harmless.

All of these things are examples of a system being dragged out of regeneration into degeneration. And it’s affecting all of us, because we’re all natural, regenerative systems relying for our survival on a much larger series of natural systems that are being dragged into isfetian territory.

The importance of scale and context

One of the biggest things I wanted to make sure to clarify is that in many situations, isfet is not a singular action, but a series of actions or a trend that occurs over a period of time. Disorder is often like a crescendo: it starts off small and quiet. A few things here, a few things there. But then it slowly builds until it becomes a pattern, a habit, a trend. Something that happens consistently time and time again, which slowly takes a toll on the resilience of the system it is antagonizing.

To pick on climate change again, it wasn’t just one farmer that caused our soil to degrade. It wasn’t just one car that polluted the air. It wasn’t just one billionaire or CEO hiding key information about how we’re destroying the planet. No, it was millions of cars, hundreds of farmers and fields, and many many years of people in positions of power purposefully choosing to ignore the writing on the wall while the planet slowly degraded in the background. It’s not just one action, its lots of little actions that have built on one another to create a wave.

Similarly, the solution to something like climate change won’t be one simple action, either. It takes many many actions to degrade, and it takes many many actions to rebuild.

This is vital to understand because we must always examine situations within their wider context. We must always look at trends, because while exceptions to a rule can exist, it also belies that there is a rule, a trend, that this exception is pushing against.

This is why the balance of ma’at is so necessary. Regenerative beings need specific things in order to survive, and when that balance gets thrown into disarray, everything that system touches is effected on some level. While it’s not just a singular action that will cause a system to degenerate, at the same time, it is still very easy for things to quickly degrade and shift from bad to worse. It’s why the gods would have needed to be persistent and diligent with fighting back isfet.

I mentioned in the first post that in this modern era we have built up this sort of facade that we are somehow separate and untouchable from the natural systems we were born into, but its simply not true. The more degenerative the system we live in becomes, the more necessary and, frankly, involuntary it’ll be for people to participate in fixing the problems at hand.

Maintaining ma’at is the responsibility of all of us. Even if you’re avoiding it now, eventually you may not have that luxury.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how to apply this model to aspects of our lives to see if it is harmful and isfetian in nature, or if its helping to sustain or increase ma’at in the world.

 

Devo’s Burninatin’ Celebration 2019

I really don’t know if I should be using the same title that I did in the past for my big community execration that occurred at Wep Ronpet, but it felt weird to call it anything else, so I chose to use the same title for old time’s sake. I haven’t performed any Wep Ronpet rites since 2016, and the best part about the rites I did in 2016 is that I can’t remember anything about them. If it wasn’t for the fact that I documented them in a post, I would seriously have forgotten nearly everything about them. Memory and autoimmune diseases are fun like that.

This is the first Burninatin’ Celebration that I’ve done without Set at the helm, and without community involvement. For the first time ever (for me,) O was calling the shots and ritual work played a heavy focus for nearly every aspect of the holiday. The man seems to like to keep you busy, too, because despite the original dictation of “do what you think is best,” I soon found that he had his own laundry list of things I should be doing for each of the days.

Osiris is a diva, let it be known.

Epag Day 1: Osiris

The key words that were generated for O’s ritual were: growth, renewal, and grains. I couldn’t help but feel like there was a push to focus on his vegetative nature, and specifically, the relationship between plants and the sun. So I went with it. The morning of his day, I noticed that I had a memo to create art for him to use in the ritual, as well as “you should write about this thing over here.” Of course, I didn’t know if this meant that it was expected of me to do this for every epagomenal day, or if O was just trying to be Super Special, but as I’m sure you all know by now, I opted to just try and hit all of the same points for every epgaomenal day afterwards.

I struggled with his art piece, shifting between trying to draw a version of him, and drawing something more abstract. Most everything I started off with was very literal or related to a physical form and symbolism, but I eventually was able to break into something a little bit more abstract and got the idea to do palm trees with akh stars in the background. The white box was there in every version that I created, though I’m not sure what exactly it’s supposed to mean. I only know that it feels like the stuff on the outside is supposed to be similar to the Nun.

It’s worth noting that no other deity was so difficult to convey in an abstract form. I’m not sure what to make of that other than perhaps Osiris is really tied to his physical form in a way that other NTRW are not.

Epag Day 2: Heru-Wer

Poor Heru-Wer. His day was the definition of a cluster. I had to get up early and drag feral cats to get spayed. I had to go get groceries and send things out for wrapping up grandpa’s affairs. I didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to him, and I personally think it shows. The words originally chosen for his ritual theming were repair, restoration, finding place, completion. Unlike O, he had absolutely no druthers about anything regarding his ritual structure or the contents therein. Its about the same as the direction for his post. It was vague and probably could have been nothing more than a footnote in this very post, but I personally wish he got more attention, and so I wanted to make sure he had a place within the week of posts that was coming.

So I haphazardly attempted to convey what he had given me, and I wish I could rewrite the post, because I could do so much more with it now that it’s sat in my head for a week, but I was trying to ride with Osiris’ encouragement to stay within the present day and to not focus on “working ahead” so that I could ensure that deadlines were met. I think the idea was to get lost in the experience and not focus on the potential “failing” of a deadline, but that’s really hard when you’re me and your brain is operating on a third of what it used to.

His picture had direction, but my skill level wasn’t what it needed to be in order to make it what I saw in my head. The image is supposed to be of a ridge of either sand or mountains, perhaps a canyon, in the foreground. And the upper portion of the image was to be a multicolored sunset that was vibrant and bright. But the more I tried to layer on color, the more muddy it got, so I let it be and I hope he isn’t too sad about it.

Unlike most of the other NTRW, Heru-Wer did actually convey imagery and emotions to me throughout the art making and ritual process. Despite our distance in terms of regular contact, he is surprisingly open with me whenever I actually attempt to show up. Again, I don’t know what to make of that.

Epag Day 3: Set

The day I was looking forward to the least. The entire process of trying to get anything from Set on what to do for his ritual (or his anything) has been challenging. Because his day was in the middle of the epag days, and because it was the same day that my Monthly Ma’at ritual would have occurred, I chose to make ma’at his theming, since his energies are best utilized when in alignment with ma’at anyways.

The day itself was very fitting for him. The weather was abnormally cool, we had just had a night of storms and so it was lightly raining and cloudy most of the day. When I first tried to prod Set for topics for his post, the only response I originally got was an old song that played during one of our first known encounters. It’s a song that I don’t particularly like anymore, but liked it a lot when I was a kid and was still into country music. The song played and played inside of my head for hours, and I began to question if I would be able to figure anything out fast enough to actually make a post about it. I have no clue if the song playing was more a case of him playing coy, or if actually wanted me to write about the song itself. My biggest concern was ultimately that I didn’t think anyone would care about a post where I prattle on about how the song is largely tied to emotions, and how I have dodged his emotions for years for reasons I don’t fully understand.

I’m fully aware that the complicated and messy state of our relationship underpinned every aspect of his day because we’ve been in this awkward staring-from-a-distance stance for a few years now. I first noticed sometime last year that his statue was still relatively open and functional in comparison to everyone else who seemingly had wrapped up shop and closed the door because I wasn’t home anymore. Every time I walk past the cabinet where his statue currently lives, I feel the eyes on me. I’m completely and utterly aware that despite the fact that he has been “gone,” he has been keeping tabs the entire time.

This is further complicated by my recent departure from pretty much every aspect of what me and Set worked on once upon a time. The fact that I’m currently doing work for O, and that I don’t know how much mingling or interacting Set and I are even supposed/allowed to have at the moment. Everything about “us” is currently kinda weird and not stable, and I think it bled into everything I tried to do for him.

I wrote four posts on his day. Only one went out to be read, and the others will languish in my drafts bin until I get tired of looking at them and delete them. I wanted to piggy back off of SGI’s post because it was a good one, and it was ultimately their post that helped me decide to actually post something, even if it wasn’t great. I admit that the lack of response to Heru Wer’s post left me questioning if doing daily posts for a week was somehow a Bad Idea, but again, I was trying to lean into what O wanted. So here we are.

His art was very abstract and very straightforward. When I was done with it, it reminded me a lot of the fiery pits that are said to exist in the Duat, they are places where people who are not in alignment with ma’at will be burned by the fire, but those who are pure enough will be rejuvenated by the fire.

Unlike everyone else, I got the urge to place his statue onto the shrine surface while doing his ritual. When I got the image of what to do, it was like someone sitting on their couch with their soda in their left hand, their popcorn in their right hand, soaking in the light of the tv. So that’s why his statue is facing away from me in the image.

Epag Day 4: Aset

Ever since reading the CT for my year of rites work, I’ve found I have way too many feelings and identifications with Aset for my preferences. Once upon a time she had ventured forward, and I suppose I no longer really question why. There’s too much overlap in our histories for us to not have at least some things in common. Her ritual key words were acceptance, abundance, and new beginnings, and most of her ritual rubric flowed way more freely than the others. For whatever reason, there is a clear power shift within her ritual that is different from everyone else’s. Make of that what you will.

Her art piece came forward quite clearly. I had two scrap pieces left over from some of the week’s earlier art, and for whatever reason, it seemed that I should use two of the pieces to create what is essentially one piece of art. My ability to get the art just so was limited by my technique. The purple isn’t as deep and royal as I wanted, and I wanted there to be more depth in the spiral, but I couldn’t make it happen.

 

Her post almost didn’t happen, either. My mother was over for most of the day, and I find it very hard to concentrate or work when she’s here, so I had to wait until the evening hours to even really sit down and think about what to write. I suppose in some respects because she’s so prolific, it can be challenging to figure out which aspect to write about because there are so many options to choose from. But I also expect that part of my difficulties laid in the fact that my relating to her is still too close to home right now. It’s hard for me to branch out beyond “it hurts to lose someone,” and to try and find something more empowering or uplifting that fit in with the overall theming of the week was a bit challenging because of where I’m at mentally. But it eventually got done.

Epag Day 5: Nebhet

Nebhet is always an enigma for me. Any year I’ve celebrated the epagomenal days, she’s always been quite vacant or MIA, but she showed up pretty strongly this year. Compared to everyone else, she was the most eager to get started, since I could feel her as early as the night before. I had minor guidance on her ritual work, though it was more of a “here is a picture, use that to drive your rubric,” which only sorta helped. Her key words were peace, stillness, health, and rejuvenation, and the image I received was mostly black/purple and gold. I wanted to include instances of black and gold in the rubric, but I wasn’t sure if it would make sense or be accurate, so I changed things slightly to stay on the safe side. Even now, I have fears of venturing too far out of our traditional safe zones when it comes to rubric creation, and this is a good example of it.

I was met with heavy visions the morning of her day. They were abstract in a lot of ways, but after pouring through what little information I have on Nebhet afterwards, I think I can sort of see what was being shown to me, though I’m not sure what to do with it. There were a million impressions I got about her through these visions, but again, my fear of presenting UPG and it being inaccurate sorta stalled me out from writing about it. I poked and prodded all day to try and see if I could tease a post out of me, but it never happened. She had stated early on in the day that a post wouldn’t be necessary, so I tried to remind myself that I am human, and just dealt with the fact that I didn’t finish what I had started.

I had an idea for her artwork from day one, but when I finally put pen to paper, it changed ever so slightly. Overall, I think I like her piece the most.

I offered her the same grapes that I used for the propitiation at the beginning of the epagomenal days, largely because I was having a bad eating day, and it seemed acceptable to her to give something that represents the food, even if I wasn’t going to eat it (because it’s not edible.)

Wep Ronpet Proper

The actual rites for Wep Ronpet happened a day late for me. The original day they were scheduled ended up turning out pretty awful. I had a really bad mental health day, and it seemed like a bad space to be in for celebrating the new year. So instead, I focused on figuring out what I wanted to execrate the next day, and where I really wanted to go in the next six months.

The next morning I performed the execration bright and early, and followed that up with rituals later on in the day. When I took my usual photo of the shrine at the end of the ritual, I remarked at how similar it looked to all of the other more-regular rituals that I’ve been doing. And honestly, the day wasn’t markedly different or celebrated beyond that, even though it sounded nice in theory. I can’t help but wonder what it means that my brain picked up on the regularity or commonness of such a more Important holiday. I can’t tell if it means I should have done more, or if the point is that the Important holidays are also just regular days, part of a regular thing that repeats itself, well, regularly.

Either way, that was it for this year. If you made it through all 2500 words of this post, you deserve a cookie.

 

I Have Come, Equipped with Magic

I have always felt as though there was a lot of overlap between Aset and Set, as in their drive and ability to Get What They Want always seemed similar to me. Both deities seem to be willing to kick a devotee into gear by any means necessary in order to get things moving forward. Both have been known to create waves throughout the company of the NTRW, both are capable of fighting off a/pep from the solar barque (fun fact, it’s not just Set who is capable of this,) and both have a way of being a bit subversive in the rules that they choose to follow or not follow. Even Spell 84 in Borghouts states that “her heart was more rebellious than an infinite number of men”, and I don’t know how much more alignment with Setian energy you can get with so much rebellion flowing through your veins.

In many ways, both Set and Aset have very good survival methods, though I posit that they survive and are able to do what they do through very different means. Traditionally, Set is considered a deity of strength and force. As mentioned yesterday, he represents everything that is natural, wild, and out of our control. In terms of tropes, he’s the character that is able to punch his way out of any situation. It is his strength and ability to force change where he needs or wants it to be that allows him to be effective.

Aset, on the other hand, is less about physical force and is more about mental acuity and observation put into action. It’s her ability to read a situation quickly, and know exactly who or what to do or say to shift the tide into her favor that has allowed her to be as successful as she has been. As it happens, I was looking into what causes resiliency and an ability to survive in the face of danger or threat (for Set’s post,) and it turns out that being able to read a situation and make very quick and decisive decisions at the drop of a hat is key to being able to survive despite incredible obstacles. I believe that Aset embodies these aspects of survival.

Regardless of what version of the Osirian myth you read, Aset is always front and center, to facilitate Osiris’ safe transition into his new way of being. It’s also Aset who facilitates Horus’ ability to not only be conceived, but to survive long enough to become King. While it’s true that Aset often utilizes other entity’s powers and abilities to make this happen (such as calling on the NTRW to heal Horus when he is stung by a scorpion, etc.), that is exactly what makes her heka so impressive and formidable.

In many ways, her ability to find the right spaces to pick at, to ask the right questions, create the right alliances or situations to get what she wants — all of these things are forms of her heka, and they are what make her powerful. She doesn’t even necessarily have to do the work — she can say the right things to get you into doing it for her, or set it up in such a fashion where you have no choice but to acquiesce her request.

“Now Isis was a wise woman. Her heart was more rebellious than an infinite number of men, more smart than an infinite number of gods. She was more clever than an infinite number of spirits. There was nothing she was ignorant of in heaven or on the earth- like Re’, who takes care of the needs of the earth.”

When you consider the fact that Aset is the throne, the seat upon which kingship is grounded, it begs to ask if these are the sorts of traits necessary to excel as the King. Of course, you have traits from both Set and Horus, but if you’re not capable of knowing when to use brute strength vs. when to use structures and legality to get what you need, you won’t be very effective at wielding either aspect. To me, it seems that Aset has the means by which to know how and when to utilize the skills of herself and others so that the task gets done quickly and effectively. Having her abilities would give you a firm foundation to utilize any other skills you gained throughout a lifetime.

And if we go back to the concept that each of us is, in our own way, kings within our own lives, it begs to ask if we should be cultivating more of these aspects within ourselves as well. Not necessarily the ability to manipulate people or use people to get what we want (as it is sometimes stated that Aset has done in some myths,) but instead to cultivate and fine-tune our senses, communication, and heka to be more effective in creating beneficial outcomes out of whatever kind of situation you walk into.

There are means to improve our observation skills, and improving those skills will likely open us up to new possibilities, new ideas, new edges to interact with. There are means to become better listeners, better communicators, and better humans that will bring us to be more present with the world around us. When you’re more present, you’re more able to seize opportunity, notice small details, and get what you want out of life. All of these things are embodied by aspects of Aset, and all of these things feed into ma’at. If Aset is the foundation upon which a king sits, then perhaps her skills should be the foundation upon building a more stable life or existence.

I think there is one other key part to really wielding the type of heka that Aset does, and that is the skill of knowing where you are going. When I went to her with my thoughts about the contents of this post, she responded with only thing (and I am paraphrasing), “Knowing how to get what you want is important, but what is it exactly that you want?” I think it bears repeating that we may all know what we don’t want, but there is also power in knowing what we do want. In order to truly tap into her ability to transform a situation, we must have an idea of what we want to transform the situation in to.

Do you feel that you embody Aset’s heka? Do you wish that you did? In what ways would her type of heka be helpful in your life?