State of the Shrines 2019

Okay, so before I start, I do want to say that this is the first time I’ve taken down shrines for this for privacy/oathbound reasons. I took down my Sau shrines, and I’ve removed some things from Hermes’ shrine bc they are sekrit and I don’t want to share them. So the bedroom overviews you’ll see are not quite how they are irl bc some shrines are gone, but that’s the basic plan of it. I feel like I’ve really focused down on only having shrines up that I’m actually using, so it’s a lot less now than what I used to have, but I’m happy with it. My focus this year is really just about magical practice and Quan Yin practice, so it does make it easier to maintain my shrines that way when I don’t need so many of them.

Wep Ronpet this year though was a bit of a wipe out. I had menstruation to deal with, which meant my statue washing and preparations were thrown off schedule, and I had a migraine that also delayed me doing anything in terms of ritual, so nothing really happened. But I did get my statues washed, which was good. I usually do all of them if I have time, but this time, I just did my Sobek shrine statues, and gave them all a good wash, as well as cleaning all the shrines.

But that’s life, really, so. I’ll give you the bedroom overview pics first, then we’ll dive into the shrine tours. ❤

Bedroom Shrines Update #2

Since my last State of the Shrines post has been making the rounds on tumblr recently, I thought I’d post some more photos of what I’ve done in my room now. I’ve got most of the work done, bar one Ivar shelf in the corner, and the bookshelves over the bed, and hanging a few final pieces (like picture frames etc), and then it’ll be done. So this isn’t an official State of the Shrines for 2018 yet, but it’s progress. I’ll do a proper one once everything’s done, bc there are a few shrines I’m planning for the bookshelves so it’s not done until they’re up there.

Be aware that everything is still a work in progress, and I’m still figuring out how I want everything to be, so things may not stay this way as I finish everything off, but it’s working for now. I may still decide to redo things, or change things around, and I’m still sorting out how I want the altar by the window to function, since both Mary and Aphrodite’s shrines are going to be on the bookshelves. So we’ll see how that one settles in. So yeah, there are a few odd statues that are just hanging around, not quite in the right place yet, but for the most part, it’s working for me.

I have a lot of photos, so bear with me, but see under the cut for what I’ve got so far. ❤

Shrine Updates, August 2017

So it’s been a bit of a quiet month, but that’s okay. There’s been a lot of prep work and putting things into place and sorting things out and trying some other things out, too. The last two days have been very Spring-like: warm and sunny and nice. I got into a bit of a cleaning mood, and have spent the time redoing my shrines, and my spaces, doing a little decluttering, and moving a few things around so they work better for me. I think I’ve also decided on at least one piece of fiction to include in the anthology, it will just need some work and editing and world-building first.

There’s a part of me that just wants to ramble on about the shrines, but honestly, I feel like I’ve written too much about them and I’d just be repeating myself. But I made some videos, so take a look at them, and I’ll ramble about them just a little.

The shrines have settled in

Wesir all wrapped and ready for the Mysteries.

So I wrote a while back about changing the shrines around, but I didn’t want to post about them until they’d settled in. Sometimes, new shrine arrangements need time for me to tweak them, to make sure they are right. Big changes, too, are ones I feel I need to sit with, in case I decide to change them back. So I have given myself a week or so to tweak and sit and practice and figure out what I need to do to make them right, and I think I’m done, for the moment. Shrines always change, they never stay the same, so this is no more permanent than my other shrines. It’s just a reflection of where I am in my path right now.

I’ve also just got around to wrapping my statue of Wesir. It’s a bit later than I normally do it, given there’s only a week to go. But I noticed the lack of His presence once it was done. I do miss Him during this time, but it’s never permanent.

One thing I did achieve today was to go back through the Daybook and pick out all the Mysteries of Wesir-related festivals, and begin compiling something for that. I wanted a more complete picture than the eight-day one I’ve been working with, and going by the dates, I’m actually a few weeks early with mine if I schedule it on May 1, so that’ll be something to think about, whether I keep the May 1 start date, or keep the Kemetic dates instead.

I wouldn’t mind moving it so much. It would give me a bit of breathing space to do a more Hekate-focused May 1 High Day rite without it crashing into the Mysteries. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I would appreciate that, since I wouldn’t need to try to do too many things at once. So that’s definitely on the cards, but nothing’s been decided yet.

State of the Shrines, March 2017

It’s not quite a 3mx3m square room, so you can see how little space I have to work in. But I do make it work hard, so. That’s something, I guess.

So, it’s the Equinox, and this feels like the right time to post about this, given where I am with my #domagick work. I haven’t done any formal rituals for the Equinox just yet, but I’m saving that for Thursday, I think, when I have more brain to sort them out. I also have some videos I need to upload to youtubes, but they are too big, and my internet too slow, to get that done tonight, so. That is another job for Thursday.

If you haven’t been keeping up with my #domagick posts, you can read all about my fire magic experiments over at the Grimoire. I’ve been doing some self-transformation work, and a helluva lot of decluttering, and a lot of that work is starting to come to a close as we enter the week before the Deipnon. I plan to post more about that over here when it’s done, sort of like a summary post, but for now, go read the Grimoire for your day-by-day #domagick posts.

So, since I didn’t get around to this at Wep Ronpet, here’s a belated Equinatorial State of the Shrines for another year.

Well, that happened fast

The new naos with the veil raised

The new naos with the veil closed

Well, I didn’t think the new naos would get done until the weekend, but dad finished it off for me while I was at work today, which is really sweet of him. We’d started gluing some of the bits together last night, but there wasn’t time, nor clamps, to finish it then. But I’m glad dad understood what I was trying to make, because this is exactly what I had in mind. All we added once I got home was a plywood base to stabilise it. It’s certainly not perfect, and it’s a bit rough in places, but to be honest, I don’t care. It’s exactly what I saw in my mind when I considered a wooden naos like this, and it suits the shrine perfectly. Having the sides open like that makes it feel smaller than it really is. An enclosed cabinet would feel too big for that space, not if it was big enough for those statues. I may paint it later on down the line, but right now, I’m happy for it to be as it is.

But then I’ve always liked my naos boxes to be semi-open, rather than fully enclosed. It makes the connections work better for me if I can see Them and touch Them, even if They sit in a naos. It’s the introvert coming out in me, I think. I have my space, the gods have Their space, but we can still see each other, and spend time with each other, if we want to.

I also love the symbolism of blue starry material being lifted up to make the roof, and to sit as a veil in front of the shrine. I have loved this material ever since I picked it up at an op shop for $5, and while I gave away some of it because there was more than I could ever use, I have enough for this. And it’s beautiful. Plus, I can do the ka embrace a lot easier with this naos than with the bodged up cardboard one. But, to be honest, if I have the roof, and some way to veil it, that’s really all I need for a naos. The rest is naos-dressing. I’m sure someone else would find this too open for them to use as a naos, but that’s fine. Others may prefer the totally enclosed cabinets, and that’s also fine. But for me, this is the way to go, and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out.

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.

The new Shedety Shrine

The new shrine, photographed after this morning’s devotions.

So I think I’m just about settled on this particular layout for the time being, so I thought I’d give you all a proper look at it. The first obvious thing is that the naos is gone. It just wasn’t going to work on a shrine for four gods, so it’s been put away for now. It’s a bit sad, not having the naos, but I like this setup, too. The shrine feels focused now, and I’ve cleared out some of the excess stuff that was making it feel like there was too much going on.

The shrine gets used as an altar table for the druidic shrine above, so there has to be enough space to work as well as be a shrine, and it’s a constant give and take on how much space is available for each. This made it tricky to settle on a layout that worked, because it had to work for my own daily devotions. Everything had to be in the right place so it’s easy to reach, and I don’t burn myself, and there’s room for the ritual book, and everything else.

Transition

I have to say, I’m still settling into the routine of having Isis back in my daily devotions again. Honouring two gods is easy, you do morning and evening, and it’s fine. Adding a third, well. That’s a bit tricky. Particularly when I know the timing for any specific ritual is awkward because I don’t feel like I can do it at work, and finding another way to integrate it into my daily routine has proved, well. I have had mixed results. I’m sorry to keep banging on about this, but it’s a big change for me, and there’s a whole lotta pondering going on. So you’ll forgive me for rambling about it some more.

I promise no more shrine photos until everything’s settled. Because I changed it up again today, and toyed with removing the naos completely, and, well. I’m going to let it sit for a while, and see how well everyone likes it, before I decide to keep it. But once things are settled, there will definitely be a post on that. The only reason I even changed it up today was that I was doing some DP homework on ancestors, and thought of the Mysteries of Wesir, and how I was going to set up a shrine for that, and once I moved Wesir to the centre of the shrine, now sans naos, well. He wasn’t keen to leave. And Isis now sits before Him, and Sobek and Heru surround Him, protecting Him. But like I said, I haven’t settled on it yet, and it may change again as I use it and tinker with it so it suits my rituals perfectly.

Making room for other gods, even related gods, on the Shedety shrine, has changed the feel of it. It’s no longer just Sobek and Heru’s shrine, Wesir and Isis are there, too. Which is why I am toying with not having the naos, because it was originally dedicated to two gods, and it’s not really designed for four. But I’m still pondering that. I may bring it back if this doesn’t work out. Maybe I’ll find a new naos later on, but for now, perhaps it isn’t needed. We’ll see.

My shrine updates should not be this frequent gdi

Hi Wesir! Also, sorry about the shadow. The lighting in my room is terrible most of the time. I was using the flash and everything, gdi.

I swear I only did this a week ago. Why am I rearranging my shrines again why. Wesir was not meant to go there. He was going to go on my windowsill, where there was a nice spot just the right size. I was going to gaze at His serene face as I worked to finish the Contendings retelling, and it was going to be grand. I mean, I’ve been looking for a mummiform statue like that for a while now, for easier Mysteries of Wesir shrouding amongst other things, but never found one I liked enough at a time when I had actual money to buy one. So when I looked a few weeks back, I saw this one, and bookmarked it for future purchasing. And then they went and cut 30% off the price, and since he was coming from the other side of the country, I calculated that the price I paid for him was about the equivalent of a similar 6in Wesir from the US. So. I now have a big Wesir. And he is beautiful. He has a very calm energy about him.