An update, I guess?

idk, this is probably going to be a bit rambly, but like everyone, a lot’s happened since February, and I’m only just beginning to find some clear air to process it all. Not gonna do a lot of mundane stuff here, but things are okay where I am, for the moment, anyway. Kinda glad to be living in the most isolated capital city in the world with an actually competent State govermnent. ❤

I’ve really only started to Do Things during the past month, and turn my focus back on my practice. Mostly, I’m just doing senut and/or simply offering incense in the morning, and I’ve gone back to Quan Yin practice in the evenings before bed, because I find that very calming. That’s the extent of my work right now, but that’s really only settled in the last week. Before that I felt sort of lost and not sure what on earth to do because everything just felt so overwhelming. We went from bushfires to pandemic to police brutality protests (and I was struggling with post-grad uni work!) and it was just A Lot to deal with all at once.

30 Days of Sobek: Day 9 – Common Mistakes about Sobek

I have to admit, I had a lot of trouble with this one, because I … don’t think there are that many of them? I think Sobek’s obscurity has stopped a lot of common mistakes or misunderstandings. There are a few, but I think most of them come down to misidentification, and the assumption that any crocodile in the old texts is Sobek, when sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, it’s Maga*. Or Set. Or it’s just a fkn crocodile. Or a crocodile demon.

If we’re talking modern depictions and His appearances in movies, books, and TV, then, well. That tends to be much more OC. Most academic and historical texts I’ve come across tend to be much more consistent than non-historical texts. In fiction, He is often depicted as evil, or as a purely voracious god, ignoring completely the reasons why He was beloved by Egyptians and prayed to for protection and strength. I don’t think I’ve ever come across Him depicted as a god of kingship, either. It’s usually just evil crocodile god. Which is not only incorrect, but only a fraction of what the history actually says about Him.

But I think that’s probably about it? Obscurity has sort of saved Him from a lot of bullshit, but He still mostly just gets ‘evil crocodile god’ when they decide not to bring Set in for once. If anyone knows of any others, let me know. I really don’t pay much attention to Egyptian-themed/set media, so I’m not sure if I’ve missed anything more egregious here.

* I can only find scraps of references about Maga and whether Maga is just a form of Set or a ‘son of Set’ or just some dickhead crocodile demongodthing, so. YMMV.

Tara

So. I’ve had this Isis-Renenutet-Mary-Hekate thing going on for a while, which Quanyin joined a while back since I started doing regular practice with Her again. And I’ve never quite known what to call this, except for a constellation. It came first as a ‘Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea’ sort of energy, and stars and stellar energy have always been a part of this … whatever it is. I’m a polytheist, and that’s how I’ve experienced these gods as separate beings, so it never felt like I was just seeing different faces of one being. There may have been some core energy at the heart of it, but it felt like a collection of goddesses with a similar energy to them, just sort of, well. Being a constellation. Not one being, but several, joined together with a similar thread.

Yeah. I thought that until yesterday. I woke up feeling like Quanyin wanted something deeper from me, more than just practice, but to go deeper and study Buddhism properly. And during the Tara devotions with Yeshe last night (well, it’s last night for me), I saw Tara while I was chanting Her mantra. She took my hands, and we were dancing together on a hill under a dark starry sky. She pointed out stars to me. She seemed very happy. And then, at the end of the chanting, She sat in front of me, and touched my third eye with Her left hand, as if She placing a dot or a bindi or something there. I’m still seeing that today, seeing Her face and Her smile, and the dancing under the stars. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen something while chanting mantras.

And I’ve woken up today pondering whether this constellation is all manifestations of Tara. Or at least, that She’s that core stellar energy at the heart of it. I’ve never done much research into Tara, I have to admit, so I’m starting from scratch with Her. But it makes a weird amount of sense, so. I’m actually tempted to set up a proper Goddess altar now, and see where that work takes me. Things are changing a lot right now, and I have no idea where this is going to go, or where I’ll end up. But for now, Tara. And writing. And all the gods in the world, or something.

Monasticism and other weird shit

In  many ways, it’s been a very strange month. I guess I expected nothing less when Hekate decided to come by and change everything. I’m okay with it, even though I feel like I’m moving down a path I’m very unfamiliar with. There’s a whole lot of so much more I can’t find the words to talk about right now, except She’s basically taken over my NaNo fic this year, and everything right now is just … complicated. I have a lot of NaNo prep to do, that She’s asking me to do, and what the end result of that is, I don’t know. I’ll just sit down and write and see what happens.

The monasticism is … sort of new. It’s been a vague interest for a number of years, but I never really took the plunge with it until now. It’s that bridge between priest and devotee which is sort of neither, and doesn’t involve caring for open statues (which I am not built for). Kemetic monasticism is a strange beast that I am still beginning to wrestle with in terms of how do you even do that and why. But at the last deipnon, when I was with Hekate, there were Sobek and Heru, welcoming me through a door, that they were ready for me now, and so I have new rites, and a new ritual book, and a thousand things I still don’t understand. That’s a whole separate post in and of itself, but I’ll save that for later when I’m more confident I know what it is I’m actually building.

Hekate keeps pushing me towards magic and witchcraft. I’m watching Supernatural for the first time for NaNo genre inspiration. This phrase, this character, ‘the Black Priest’, is haunting me now, and I wish I had the coherency to talk about that, too. All I know is Hekate is taking me down a road, and it’s a confusing road, but for whatever daft reason, I trust Her enough to know She’s not leading me anywhere nasty. Different, perhaps. Challenging, most certainly. I don’t even know what the end game is, nor am I sure I want to know.

Also, Isis-Renenutet-Hekate-Mary is doing my head in idek. I get headaches just trying to parse out that confusing syncretic mess. /ow. I even have a statue of Mary now, which has only taken me most of my life to get brave enough to buy. I don’t even understand that. For whatever daft reason, she seems to like me, so okay, sure. I’ve also had Isis, Mary, and Hekate appear together in meditation twice now, so this is not just a weird fluke. There’s something here, but I have nfi what. I mean, I know what the connection is. I can trace it. But WHY idek. WHY.

I don’t always like doing posts like this, where nothing is really certain and I’m just rambling on about woo and vagaries. But it’s been nearly a month since I last posted, and I felt I needed to write something else now, just to elucidate where my brain is right now. Where this ends up, I have nfi. I’m sure it’ll be fun finding out, though.

Always with the crossroads

I feel like I should be used to predicting this by now, that whenever Hekate takes over my life (like She has at the moment), I end up at a crossroads period. Which is fine. I always like a chance to stop and figure my shit out, so that’s nice. I just always feel a bit restless when I get there, because all my habits grind to a halt until it’s over, which doesn’t help to keep my ritual habits going, ngl.

Everything’s become a bit complicated at the moment. Apart from my CoH Hekate devotional work, my Kemetic practice has come to a bit of a halt. Also, Hekate is all, study witchcraft for me, and so I’m actually reading books about Wicca in a way I haven’t since I first started out in 2000; I suspect it’s one of those ‘know the rules before you break them’ things, but I’m still not really sure at the moment. I suppose I could’ve done without Sobek suggesting I might open a statue for Him in the middle of all this, leading me to change my shrine around, and my daily rites, again. Also, Isis-Renenutet-Mary-Hekate-Selene can you stop being confusing I am totally done with this.

Also, Ganesh is back on my altar because Reasons??????? *throws hands up* /idek anymore

OH. NOVELS. HERMES. WRITING OIGUBSDUGlfsjygfksygks. Yes. That is another thing I need to talk about idek.

Anyway, have a ramble below the cut about weird religious things, if the tl;dr above isn’t enough for you.

So. I have a pendulum now.

NGL, I have been on the sceptical side of pendulums ever since I heard about them, because it just feels like a divination method more prone to human error than others. So I’ve never bothered to get a pendulum because it just felt unreliable.

So. I’m at my op shop today, and a lady brings a bag of stuff in, and in amongst the clothes is a slightly chipped clear quartz pendulum, the sort that’s on a long chain so you can wear it as a necklace. I mean, it clearly wasn’t just a necklace, the quartz point just looks like a pendulum point. Even though that point is missing a chip.

Anyway, I was curious. I’ve never actually used a pendulum before, so I wanted to know if it was all just bullshit. So I hold it steady and think ‘yes’ at it as I look at it, and it begins moving up and down in front of me. I think ‘no’ and it changes direction and begins moving again. I ask ‘unsure’ and it begins circling. This is, granted, normal pendulum behaviour, or so I’ve read. But it’s still weird wtf I have only just picked you up and you’re moving wtf. I do not understand this wtf.

My spiritual life is weird ngl

Isis and Hekate turning up in meditation together? Not a surprise. They’ve done this before. Though Isis was all about explaining how much like Hekate She is by quoting my own lines about Hekate back to me. And also being a cobra because Renenutet idk.

But then They bring Mary into this, and She’s all, ‘I miss you’ and hugs me tight, and I don’t even know. I suppose this is what I get for having a connection with Mary and NO ONE ELSE in the entire Christian pantheon. But that’s okay. I like Mary. Years and years ago, I used to pray the Rosary for Her, but it was never a consistent or permanent practice for me. I was actually researching Catholicism for a fic I was writing, and being me, I like to practice what I’m researching, so I can write it better, so. I prayed the Rosary for Her. I haven’t done it for such a long time, though, but I remember it being very peaceful. Which is why I dug out my old rosaries again for Her. One was given to me a long time ago by a Palestinian guest of my mother’s, and the other I bought at the Melbourne Anglican Cathedral (which, holy shit, there is some srs energy in that place).

That said, it is weird to have Isis, Mary, AND Hekate all around you all at once. It makes sense, of course, and it’s something I’ve contemplated before (Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea ftw), but I’ve never had all three of them together like that before. But okay, sure. I’ll run with this. It’s not like my practice isn’t complicated enough. It’s fine. It’s all fine. XD

Apparently we are naos-ing again

This is a terrible angle because it’s from where I’m sitting down, and when I’m standing, I can’t see the underside of the top. Just pretend it’s white all over.

IDEK. I was sitting down this afternoon to rewrite my daily rites since the ones in my ritual book are just for Sobek and Heru, and now I have Isis and Wesir to add to those and it was getting annoying having to flick through mid-ritual to the right spot, rather than have it all written out in the one place. But as I’m working on that, and reworking it, I’m pondering a different set of rites entirely, and then I get the urge to make a naos out of a box that’s lying around, and suddenly, there it is.

If space and money weren’t an object, I’d just buy a cabinet and be done with it, but it’s a tricky spot and there isn’t much space, so this is what it is now. Apparently I need to be able to open/close the shrine more than I need anything aesthetically pretty at the moment, but I might bodge together a wooden version later on if I feel that’s a necessary next step. I may still switch things up as I work with it, and I may decide this is a terrible idea and make a wooden one sooner rather than later, but we’ll see.

It’s felt like a very busy week, and it probably has been. Today has been the only day of rest, I guess, that I’ve had, with the exception that I was out tonight with my bff for her birthday, and now I don’t have the energy or preparation for deipnon, so that’ll have to be done tomorrow. All I can brain about now is tonight’s feast for Wesir, that’s all I have the energy for at the moment. But that’s okay.

Trans Rite of Elevation

Well, I’ve got my shrine mostly organised. I did some planning at work today on the layout and positioning, and that’s mostly worked out. I’ll post some pics later, once it gets underway. I wanted to get it mostly organised before we’re due to begin on Thursday, because work, and I would not have the spoons to organise the shrine that night as well as put something together. At least now I can concentrate on finalising the liturgy I’ll be using.

Also, I have Made A Tumblr for the rite, since they’re tumblr-based, and I might as well join in there. Whether I use it after that remains to be seen. I have no love nor time for tumblr. And I will probably get around to setting up cross-posting so all my TDoE/TDoR stuff goes there. But if anyone cares, this is me: http://sobekemiti.tumblr.com/

Because I am original or something idk.

Anyway. I am way behind on my NaNoing, so I’m going to try to get even 1k done tonight, just so I don’t feel like I’ve been neglecting it for the past two days.

Reflections on Polytheism

My spiritual life is a bit of a shambles at the moment, too. I’m doing my daily devotions to Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset, and that’s about it. And it’s not that I don’t mind that, because simple and ‘able to be done when half-asleep and just out of bed’ is what I like, I feel directionless. It may be that I am overthinking things, and trying to make things more complicated than they need to be. Wouldn’t be the first time. But IDK. It’s crashed into the chaos that has been the past two months, so I’m just feeling overwhelmed by it all and uninspired, and I just need some clean, fresh air to sort all this shit out.

I don’t even know what I am anymore, except a polytheist and Sobek devotee. Which is fine, but. Not recon. Not not-recon. Not Wiccish. Not, well, I don’t even know anymore.