continuing exploration of ancient Egyptian religion
My friend Setken, one of my fellow Kemetic Interfaith Network bloggers, wrote an interesting post that posed several questions and invited comment. Take a look! I’m putting my responses here. I think we Kemetics are making something very new. We can’t help but do it, because re-creating the past is an impossibility. But what are we…
Devo has just done an intro on making and activating your own amulets. Enjoy!
My friend Devo has written a summary of how the ancient Kemetic priesthood operated, and some comparison on how priesthood is handled now, on The Twisted Rope blog: Kemetic Priesthood: Then and Now. She’ll do a post later with her ideas on it, and I plan to do a response here as well. What do you,…
In part 1, I shared some photos of the Heqet statue in the Cleveland Museum of art. Now we’ll talk about some of her aspects. One of Heqet’s associations is with fertility, probably because of the large number of eggs frogs lay. She’s associated with childbirth, and hastening childbirth, and is identified with midwives. She…
The Forge of the Coppersmiths! Execration. It’s the more precise term for ‘curse.’ It comes from the Latin word “execrare.” “Ex” meaning “out” (as in exterior) and “sacrare” meaning to make sacred (as in consecrate.) Tomb curses The most famous ancient Egyptian curse is the one on King Tutankhamen’s tomb. The excavators ignored the warning:…
Why DO we worship the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt? “Why Follow An Ancient Religion?“, from the website of the Kemetic Temple of San Jose (one of two temples that author Richard Reidy is associated with,) might be a good place to start. In modern practice, I think Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) often trumps what we…
Wash before doing a ritual. In fact, do a ritual for washing! That’s the usual Kemetic practice. Before giving some specifics, let’s take a look at the reasoning behind it. Ritual is something that follows a pattern, and it’s done on a regular or semi-regular basis. Perhaps you have a ritual for turning on your…
Bes, the God of Protection My friends Satsekhem and Shefytbast have already written ‘B’ posts on Bes, but he certainly deserves one more. Check them out if you haven’t read them yet. A Bes statue… Bes was one of the most popular gods in ancient Egypt. It seems like his image was in every home,…
“… you dog-faced Egyptian swathed in linens, who are you my excellent fellow? How do you claim to be a god, you with your barking? And what’s the meaning of this spotted bull from Memphis being worshiped, giving oracles and having prophets? For I’m ashamed to mention the ibises, apes, goats, and other creatures much…
Send in the next defendant! Make it a bad one, Ammit missed lunch. “The Book of the Dead!” All right, we know it’s really the “Book of Coming Forth By Day,” but BoTD has such a delicious gothy feel to it. It’s usually the only Egyptian book you can find in bookstores, and people get…