Festival of the Half Month success

Look, it’s the full moon, it’s technically half a month in a lunar cycle, so what the hell. Thought I’d give the ritual a try to see how it goes. Clearly it worked, as I had Bast chatting to me constantly in meditation. Khonsu, too, feels a lot like Amun, but there was definitely a strength there, too. He and Bast danced on the shores of Bakhu. They were having a great time.

Djehuty just sat beside me and watched it all. I’d forgotten how much I love His quiet, knowing presence, even if His mental voice has now shifted for me into a old slightly grumpy slightly posh British dude. He did find that amusing. I haven’t actively included Him in my rituals for a very long time, other gods kept stealing all my time, but it’ll be nice to get back to doing ritual with Djehuty. I miss Him.

Bast gave me some choice advice about ancestors and kings and just going to shrine to talk to them every day. She said a whole lot of other things, too, but those are the things I remember most.

Khonsu said He wanted me to do ritual for Him at the full moons, too. That’s His time. Which makes me wonder about sticking to the lunar cycles for now, just while I work on the rest of the calendar, and then I’ll only have one half-month to worry about.

Anyway. It’s late, and I should head to bed, but I wanted to at least write about this ritual, since it seemed to go so well. Looking forward to trying out the rest of my household rituals and seeing how they settle into my practice.

Ohhai, I made you some Kemetic Household Rituals

When the gods inspire, the gods inspire. While they’re very simple rituals, that’s what I intended them to be. My style when I create rituals is to write them in such a way that they can be reduced to a bottle of water, a bowl, and some images you’ve printed from the Internet, so you don’t need a lot of kit or space to do them. And, honestly, that feels like the right sort of approach for household rituals.

I have four rituals done:

• 1st Day of the Month: House of Nut, House of Aset, House of Renenutet
• 6th Day Festival for Wesir and the Ancestors
• Festival of the Half Month: House of Khonsu, House of Bast*, House of Djehuty (* or any other Eye goddess)
• Last Day of the Month: House of Ra, House of Heru, House of Wesir

It’s not meant to be the be-all and end-all of household practices, more like a place to start, so that there’s something to build on. In particular, I feel like Bes and Taweret need … something for Themselves. But I don’t know what or how often. If anyone has any ideas, please share them.

And if you’re just here for the rituals, you can skip the cut and click the links above. Do let me know how you get on with them, I’d love to know how you end up using them.

For everyone else, have some rambling about gods and why I wrote the rituals the way I did, in case anyone wants to see my working out.

Kemetic Household Rites

So, I’m beginning the work now on figuring out some household rituals in a Kemetic framework, since if I’m going to go back to that calendar, then this just seems like the most useful thing to do. Only, Kemetics don’t seem to do household rites, or it’s not generally been emphasised very much. But, idk, man. If we can recreate the temple stuff, we should do the household stuff, too. It’s part of what I really love about Greek and Roman polytheisms, but it’s so absent in Kemetic stuff. That said, if anyone has any rites, or knows of any rituals that exist, I’d love to see them, if only for my own curiosity and inspiration.

So. That being said, I am going to write some of my own that fit my practice and what it’s evolving into. I have already bodged together a Sixth Day Rite (which I apparently have never posted here wtf) but I also want to write some rituals for the first and last days of the month, as well as the half month, too. I might also bodge together a full moon rite, but idk. I don’t know if I’ll end up doing that, but I might if Khonsu keeps gently poking at me, like He is right now. What a shy, adorable god He is.

I decided to name my first day of the month rite House of Nut, House of Aset, House of Renenutet, to mirror the last day (House of Ra, House of Heru, House of Wesir), and because idk. It fits well with my practice and gods and how I like to work. I always like to throw in some zep tepi references whenever I can, that seems to work well for me. I like that sense of opening the month like you’d open the year, to bring that repetition into the mix. It’s not a historical title for the day, but that’s what I’m running with.

I wnt to keep them short and simple, though. And I’ve changed around my shrines so I can do household rites at an actual shrine and not work from a shelf above my bed (which is not particularly practical). But that’s okay. I’ve done some other minor tweaks and changes to the other shrines, because I am constantly fiddling with them. And I am having a srs ‘gods with black skin’ aesthetic thing going on right now (there are many reasons for this) so that is also affecting which statues I use. Anyway. That’s what I’m working on now. I’ll be sure to post the rites here when they’re done, so you can all play around with them, too.

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.

Noumenia for April

…I may move the pot of brushes next time. *makes note*

GFDI it is April, not March. I am terrible at this tonight. My brain is overtired, and I need to go to bed soon. Anyway. Noumenia is done. Offered rum, and made an extra libation to Hermes. My mother is travelling back from overseas in a few hours, and I’ve had a little safe travel spell going since she left. So I finished it off tonight, and hopefully, Hermes will take care of them all and she’ll be back home safely.

Also, this desk makes a great altar, ngl. There’s enough space for everything, and for a small omen at the bottom. There’s room to place the incense next to the window, so it can not be always in my face. Should have thought of that before I burnt four tiny sticks of incense on top of a jar right next to me. I am terrible sometimes. I am probably going to give myself a migraine over this, I can feel it coming on. If I could get frankincense, myrrh, and rosemary in a Japanese incense form, I wouldn’t need to worry about this, but oh well.

Anyway. We’ve had storms tonight, and my cat has not appreciated this. She was crying outside the parents’ bedroom door halfway through the ritual, so I had to take a moment to corral her into my room. Because of the weather, I’ll pour out the offering tomorrow. And now I am going to post this and head to bed because I am tired af. But noumenia is done for another month, and I feel good.

Deipnon for April

Deipnon is done for another month. I did the asperging Thursday morning while dad was out, so I could do the whole house without being interrupted. I paid particular attention to the doors this time. The herb mix I use in my khernips that I use for deipnon asperging comprises of pre-made purification and releasing herb mixes, along with rosemary, sage, and salt, along with a lit match that is dropped in at the last minute. It seems to work pretty well.

Hekate’s supper comprised of an egg, garlic, onion, sesame seeds, and barley. I would show you a picture of it, but I have failed at lighting up that shrine sufficiently, so all but this photo look terrible. I left the supper in the compost bin after the ritual, along with the pomegranate and cranberry tea libation I ade earlier.

I did a bit of meditation, pondering Her knife. I’ve been thinking of a specific ritual knife for Her for a while now, but never settled on one I liked. I went delving for a knife, to see if I would be given any clues as to what it might look like. What I heard was Hekate describing Herself as ‘She who cuts away’. She has used Her knife on me before to cut away things that are no longer needed. This is what Her knife makes me think of. Trying to find a knife that fits that sense of things may take a while, but it’ll turn up.

Other than that, it was a good, quiet ritual. I’ve had a bit of a busy few days, so it’s nice to sit down to quiet ritual at the end of it all. I’ve just finished my noumenia ritual as well, and I’ll be writing something short up about that in a bit. I’m tired, and behind on a lot of things, but we’ll get there. Have a blessed new moon.

Sometimes, inspiration fails you

I swear, I’ve been trying all week to write something up here, but it hasn’t happened. I’ve had thoughts about all sorts of things, but they’ve come to nothing. It’s not a huge issue, it’s not like I have a set posting schedule, but I am trying to keep the posting as regular as I can, just to keep things ticking over.

But things have happened. I have spent the past month working on a short story about Hekate for one of the Covenant of Hekate’s creative projects, and there was the option once it was done to submit it to Askei Kataskei, which I did. And apparently it is good, so there’s that. I’ll let you know more on that later when I have a firm idea of what’s happening with that.

I’ve caught up on my DP High Day stuff. I had fallen behind on my essays and such, and at least I now have all my High Day essays and ritual notes done. Check out my DP blog if you’re interested in following along. I will, at some point, sit down and redraft them into proper essays, and not just collections of notes, but that’s for later. The liturgies I used have also been posted, as well as the essay notes for the May High Day, because if I do it now, then I don’t have to worry about it when the Mysteries of Wesir are taking over my life. All I will have to do is write up the ritual, and then it’s done, and I can worry about Wesir.

And now, the Noumenia

With the deipnon, comes the noumenia. It was quite a peaceful rite. I used a new liturgy I’d adapted from a couple of other noumenia rites I’d found online, and gave it more of an ADF structure, and I think it worked well. I offered honey liqueur, which I poured across the back gate after the rite. I am also drinking half a shot of the same in some ginger beer, and it is great.

I did try to do some meditation, but my brain was too fuzzy to focus on it, and I never dipped below into the landscape. I saw flashes of it, but I never went anywhere with it. But it’s okay. It happens every now and then.

Also, you can see the new Shedety shrine coming together in that photo above. I’m not entirely 100% settled on it, but it’s probably closer to done than not. Part of the fun of working with that space is that it also functions as a working altar for the druidic shrine above, and so it can’t just be a shrine. I’ve been trying to focus on everything that’s on there, and trying to decide if it should be there, or if it’s just taking up space. So it’s been stripped back a bit, and I’m trying to get as much space out of it as I can, because I like having space to work on.

I’ve also been putting the Sobek book together, gathering all the information and writings I already have, and it comes to about 77 pages or something idk. I’m not editing yet, I’m just gathering, and seeing what I’ve already got, and what I still need to get. Some things may get culled, of course, but we’ll see how it all comes together.

Anyway, in case anyone’s interested, I’ll post my nounenia liturgy below. Feel free to nick it for your own purposes, if you’re looking for something like this. I’ll add in the sources for this when I post it under the House of Life pages, but I know one was the Neokoroi (sp?) rite, and another was a blog somewhere idk. But I will chase those up, and add them in later, because I think I kept some of the words, and wrote in some of my own, and I care too much about citing my sources.

Wesir-Ra <3

Picked up this lovely seated Wesir today. ❤ My local New Age/Pagan shop is finally beginning to get Egyptian stuff in, which I have whole-heardedly encouraged, and I saw Him in the window. ❤ I have been looking for the right sort of Wesir statue for a while, and I’m glad I found Him. Just in time for the Mysteries at the end of the month. 😀

Still using Khonsu icons for Ra, which are invariably named as Horus. But it’s what Ra wants, so I feel no need to stop. Besides, it all looks balanced now. My ickle Ra/Wesir statues now have larger ones to complement them. 😀

End of year musings

It feels like so much has happened between January and now. In some ways, it’s been a really turbulent year, and I feel like I’ve been in an almost perpetual state of chaos. Good chaos, mind; it’s not like nothing productive has come of this period, but it’s still been somewhat stressful to go through all that and come out the other side.

I was going to do a separate post on Yule for PBP, but I don’t think I’ll bother. I’m not feeling up to writing another half dozen blog posts right now, so I might just draw a line under PBP for this year and begin work on next year’s posts. I still got a lot done, though. I feel like November and December were so busy I didn’t have enough time to think about blog posts anyway, so maybe that’s something to keep in mind for next year. More writing in advance and not continually second-guessing everything I’m writing.