Mysteries of Wesir and Holidays

I am in no mood to festival, let alone ‘Mysteries of Wesir’ festival. I’m coming down from Camp NaNoWriMo, in which our cabin was ridiculously successful in winning, I made some good friends, and I did a lot of work on the Pasithea’s City trilogy. The first novel is complete (bar a couple of extra scenes Athene threw at me a couple of days ago), and the second is coming along nicely. After the chaos that was April, I’ve finally got time to relax, and the timing of the Mysteries is weighing on my mind, and whether I want to stick to my fixed date, or use the actual dates, which are three weeks later. But I know I just really need to rest, and perhaps it’s better to gather my energy before tackling the Mysteries.

I think I’ll probably mark the days this week, though, with simple prayers and rituals. I have the house to myself for once and I sort of want to take advantage of that. But I don’t think I’ll do anything complicated. I mean, I pulled The Hooded Man for May (Wildwood Tarot) when I did my year reading, so. I am Taking A Hint and focusing on myself. And maybe I’ll get my shit into gear for a more formal Mysteries later on in May. Because I do want to do it properly, this is half the reason I’m spending all this time putting a Kemetic calendar together. So the festivals are accurate in terms of timing.

I still have a shrine set up, but I think I’m going to do a lot more internal work than anything else. That just feels like the more appropriate path to take, since I have the time to focus on my spiritual work now in a way I haven’t had all month. I might not get the calendar finished properly, but I’d like to get at least all the festivals for the gods listed down so I can begin pulling it all together. So I may not post much about the Mysteries this week, if only because it’ll be a lot more low-key than I’m used to doing. But that’s okay. Sometimes, you need to take care of yourself, and I can honestly feel Wesir hanging around, giving me permission to do that. But I have two days of work coming up, and a house to take care of so we’ll see what actually happens this week.

A List of Heru-sa-Aset festivals

This is what happens on a not-very-exciting day when I have a shiny Ancient Egyptian Daybook to trawl through. I attempt to make a list of just Heru-sa-Aset festivals. This is a somewhat more taxing task than just listing all the Heru ones, because Heru is fkn complicated.

So. I won’t claim this is in any way complete, because sorting out the Heru-sa references from the Heru-Wer references is a job that only ends in a headache for me, so. I have probably missed a few, and included some I probably shouldn’t have, but if you think you can do a better job than me, go for your life.

Di Wep Ronpet Nofret!

IDK, I was going to do my State of the Shrines update post today, because I finally redid the shrines yesterday, but I have made three drafts now, and changed the shrines up just as many times since then, so. I am taking this as a sign that I need to let things sit a while before I can show them off properly.

I will say, though, that the one thing I am doing is that I am stripping the shrines back to nothing. No tools, no candles, no incense, nothing. Just the gods. I’ve had this feeling lately that my shrines are just too full. There’s just too much stuff on them, and there’s stuff there I never use. The energy was just not right.

I always redo the shrines after Wep Ronpet anyway, so that wasn’t a problem. It did take me until yesterday to actually do that. This Wep Ronpet has had a weird energy. The Epagomenal days were weird, but I expect that. They are outside time, they’re meant to be weird. I also accidentally decided to just do my rituals for the gods on each of their birthdays, and not bother with my regular rituals. My rituals were ad-libbed, for the most part. I loosely – and lazily – followed the structure of my morning ritual, but only so far as anointing myself with oil, then offering a hymn, then water libations and finally anointing their faces with oil. Then there was meditation. I set my timer for 15 minutes, and started with two rounds of chanting using the lapis mala I made for Isis. The chants varied: Dua Wesir, Dua Heru, Dua Setekh; Ama Aset; Neh-beh-tet (slowly).

Wep Ronpet Eve

Another year comes to a close, and to be honest, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve done my epagomenal days a bit different to how I normally do them. I have improv’d rituals, and then spent time in meditation, beginning with chanting twice around my mala, before going to meet Them.

It seemed to work very well for the most part, and I’m surprised about that, because Heru-Wer and Nebethet aren’t gods I am very familiar with, but both seemed to work out well. It’s nice to get to know Them, and Nebethet told me tonight that She liked the ritual I used, and that I should do it next year. So that’s promising.

Wesir, Aset, and Nebethet all gave me things this time round. Wesir gave me a long roll of papyrus and a pallet; while I was with Aset, I was given three snake wands; Nebethet gave me one of Her falcons (apparently She has falcons? IDK, I’ve never spoken to Her before) as a guide and companion. Heru-Wer and Set didn’t give me things, but we did talk a lot about the Contendings. Set also kept things short with me, and went off to do Night Boat duty. I watched it fly off into the horizon above me as the sunset grew deeper.

I’m not sure what I’ll do for Wep Ronpet tomorrow. I’m tempted to set the statues in the windowsill to greet the dawn, but as I’ll be off to work, and won’t have time to reset them until I get home, I think I’ll just leave them as they are and use the resetting the shrine as part of my celebrations. That, and I want to record my setup for this year before I take it down.

So, yeah, that’s how things are going for now. I might do something more detailed on the meditations when it’s not so late, and I don’t have to type on this crappy keyboard. Di Wep Ronpet Nofret for tomorrow! ❤

The Night Vigil

It was a bit of a different Night Vigil this year. Wesir asked for books, so I made books. One is for ritual, one is for heka. So most of my three hours or so was taken up with that. But that’s okay. I find the stitching rather calming and meditative – when the thread isn’t knotting itself every three seconds. 😡

I did some breath meditation to begin with, just sitting down with Wesir’s beads in my hands. Breathing in the breath of Ma’at, and breathing out the breath of Wesir. It was a form of purification, I discovered, as the breath I was exhaling slowly became the same golden colour of Ma’at’s breath. I might try that again and see how that works for me.

I had considered putting a playlist of music together, but that didn’t happen. The silence was nice, though. Sometimes, silence works better for me than music, because I will pay more attention to music if it’s being played, and it’ll distract me. But silence, that can let the mind wander and reflect and dream.

A blessed High Day to you all!

In which I am terrible at taking photos. /not my natural talent. /lookit that blurrrrr. 

Whether you’re gearing up for Beltaine or Samhain, or for no festival at all, I hope May brings you good tidings and blessings and not!terrible things. I admit I did rather pull this High Day ritual out of my arse in terms of preparations, but it turned out well enough, I think. I did a simple one in honour of Hekate and the ancestors, and that seemed to work well. I wanted to get the rite done before May began because that’s when the Mysteries of Wesir begins for me, and I didn’t want them crashing into each other.

I offered grains, water, and honey rum. I mean, ‘grains’ is something of a misnomer, because it’s a mixture of garlic granules, sea salt crystals, barley, sesame seeds, and rosemary, but hey, grains! It’s easier to say idk.

Also, you might notice two boxes on the main shrine between the statues/behind the taper candles. They’re painted up cigar boxes. The one on the left is for tools, and contains my knife, bells, prayer beads, oils, and salt. The one on the right contains the incense I use for my daily rites: sandalwood (Heru), lotus (Isis), daphne (Sobek),  and a white sandalwood, ginkgo, and agarwood blend (Wesir). It’s internally divided with cardboard, and the glyphs are bodged together from dictionaries and drawn with not a great amount of skill. But there you go.

Anyway. I wanted to post here about the High Day tonight, and I’ll post the proper write-up over at the DP blog later. Not sure how much Mysteries of Wesir I’ll post over here, but we’ll see. I hope your festivals go well, if you are having any. Otherwise, have a great weekend.

Mysteries of Wesir preparations

This year’s Mysteries of Wesir shrine. It’s very pared back and simple, but I think it gives it a strong focus. How much of the stuff I removed will go back afterwards, I don’t know, but we’ll see.

The full moon is coming up, and I have some tools to consecrate. So it seems like the time to set up properly for the Mysteries of Wesir. I also redid the druid shrine for the coming High Day, which I still haven’t settled on yet, but it’ll be about Hekate if nothing else, so. I’ll probably do it a day or two before May 1, just so there’s space for both. I think the only thing I’ve needed to get is some more black taper candles, which I just ordered on ebay, because this is Australia in April, and black candles are hard to find at the best of times, so.

It’s been a strange week, in many ways. My daily devotions have been ad-libbed, and the gods I mention almost all the time are Ra and Wesir as I light the candles. It’s strange to do that after having such deity-focused devotions for so long, but I find it refreshing. A lot of my words have been about purifying myself; I find I’m censing myself, and purifying myself with the water offerings, and drinking in the light from the flames and letting them wash over me. It feels like it’s been a week-long ritual purification, but I’m okay with that.

There was a bit of meditation with Sobek this morning in my half-asleep state, so I’m tempted to feel like this is when things are slowly coming back to normal. The full moon ritual tomorrow, when we consecrate the heka knife, the heka snake wand, and Hekate’s knife, will probably be the start of the preparations proper for the Mysteries and the coming High Day.

I won’t be able to do the full 6 hour night vigil, though. I’ve got some paid work to do the day after, so staying up all night is not an option. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do; it’ll either be a day vigil instead so there are still 6 hours done, or it’ll be a shorter vigil in the evening, perhaps 8pm til 11pm. I’m tempted to do it during the day, because I haven’t done a full six hour vigil for a long time, and even though it won’t be quite the same during the day, it’s better than cutting it short again. But we’ll do some divination and see what the gods want.

Anyway, I have rituals to prepare and write, so I’ll leave this here. I’ll post photos of the tools later once they’ve been consecrated so you can get a better look at them and what I did with them to decorate and consecrate them.

Easter Memories and the Mysteries of Wesir

The Holy Family, and Wesir shrouded. I may switch all the (not-black) candles out for black ones closer to May.

I realise decorating for the Mysteries so soon after the Equinox is probably a bit fast for some, but for me, it’s an important marker for the beginning of the dark time of the year, and the descent into winter. It’s a reminder of what’s to come, and that Wesir’s gone from us. I’ve shrouded my other seated Wesir statue, and hidden the small 3in one away. It’s part of the ritual preparation for this time of year, to hide Wesir’s images away, and know what’s coming. The shrine feels slightly more precarious now, and while there will be things added closer to the beginning of the Mysteries, for now, Wesir is gone.

Arguably, it’s probably just a coincidence that I have felt the need to do this on Maundy Thursday, in the lead-up to Easter. But it does feel like eerie timing. It is the season of dying gods, at least down here in the southern hemisphere. It isn’t quite the season of the land dying back, though; summer is the season of dying, and drying, and cutting back. Autumn is almost a breath of relief, that things are cooling down, and that what has survived the heat will keep going.

The full moon rite for Isis last night was also good, and deserves its own write-up, though I do feel like I need to make a specific full moon rite for Her, rather than keep using the general libation rite like I am now. It works okay, but it doesn’t have the right feel, like it’s about the full moon. So I’ll take some time to think about that. Meditations were good. We had a long chat about things, like heka, and bodies, and shapeshifting, though that makes it sound far more interesting than it really was. Which, it was interesting, but long chats about magic with gods are quite different than you might imagine. But I might make a post on all that later, if I remember, because that’s not what this post is about.

Final preparations and offerings

Dodgy phone camera photo is dodgy, but I hope it suffices.

Everything has been cleaned and incensed to within an inch of its life. Old things have been discarded to make room for the new. A simple Kemetic High Day rite was done, just because I felt I needed to do something more significant than my evening rite. Water was offered. Incense is still burning. Everything is ready for the new year.

I did take an omen, with the Wildwood Tarot. I pulled the Four of Arrows – Rest; the Ace of Stones – The Foundation of Life; the Seven of Arrows – Insecurity; and 16 – The Blasted Oak. There’s a few familiar themes here, and I think I’ll leave it to sit for a while, and contemplate it further. That, and it’s late, and I have work tomorrow, and I have no time right now to spend pondering tarot cards at any great depth.

Have a blessed High Day, if you’re celebrating. I’m off to have supper before bed. And sit here, feeling at peace with the world as the minutes count down to midnight, and the beginning of the new year. Di Wep Ronpet Nofret! 😀

Wep Ronpet 2016

So today is the last of the epagomenal days, Nebethet’s birthday. Once I’m done with this entry, I’ll clean the shrine again in preparation for Wep Ronpet. I’m actually starting a new paid job tomorrow, so I won’t have the chance to do it then, so doing it now gives me a chance to prepare and take enough time to make sure things are properly cleaned.

Because of work, and because of my DP High Day rituals, Wep Ronpet is going to be simple. I’m not going to do much bar a libation or two during morning devotions, because I have my High Day ritual in the evening. I’ll be doing this purification ritual for Hekate, in what is a break in the streak of ADF COoR High Day rites. But it feels right, and She wants me to do it, so that’s what’s happening. I printed out the liturgy and stuck it in my ritual book today in preparation.