#dailyshrine Challenge and Wep Ronpet Eve

Hello! It is nearly Wep Ronpet! Bwee! 😀 I finally got time to clean out all my altars and shrines, because I had been meaning to do that all week. But if the Days Upon The Year have been anything this year, it’s been very Days Upon The Year-y. Very chaotic and things not happening how they planned, etc. And then the Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse has just thrown everything out of whack. Still! I did see it tonight, and wished very much I’d had a telescope. D:

Anyway. So. I will do Wep Ronpet things tomorrow, but for now, I wanted to post about the #dailyshrine challenge Rev Jan Avende is running over at ADF. Because if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you might have noticed that I like building shrines. 😀 So this is right up my alley. I plan to post every day over at instagram, and then write up the posts here each week, so you can see them all and have a bit more writing about why I did them the way I did.

So if you’re interested in following along, my instagram is sashataakheru. Feel free to follow me for shrine pics and cat pics, since that is basically 90% of what I post over there. 😀

Behind the cut, please see my current shrines as they are. I have video to upload tomorrow, and may post more detailed photos then, if anyone’s interested. Also, enjoy the shrines while you can, because by April, they will be totally different, because my room will be totally different. Which is why I’ll do a proper State of the Shrines when that’s all done, so you can see the new set-up then. 😀

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Sobek Devotional Update: Last Minute Submission Requests

Okay, since I meant to do this a couple of weeks ago, but Life etc, and I’ve had a couple of queries today about submissions, I just wanted to let you know that, yes, the book is going ahead, and I am still working on it. I haven’t quite decided on the cover art yet, and there’s a couple of little things I need to fix up, but it’s going ahead.

I am currently compiling the manuscript, so if you still have any last-minute submissions, you’ve got til Jan 31st to get them in. I might be able to extend that by a couple of weeks if you really need it, but I would like to finalise the manuscript by Feb 14, so I can’t guarantee anything I get past that date will make it in. It probably won’t. So don’t hang about if you still want to submit something!

Anyone wanting to make late submissions, please email sobekdevotionalATgmail.com to let me know I need to wait on you, and what you are planning to submit, so I can pencil in where it might fit as I work on finishing the manuscript. This is absolutely your last chance to get something included in the devotional, so please get in touch sooner rather than later.

Here, have an entry that’s not about the Sobek Devotional

Gods, it’s been a good, but crazy year. A lot’s happened. Like A LOT. I guess this is what I get for picking ‘courage’ as my word of the year. I can’t remember the last thing I talked about, but it’s been a relatively quiet end of the year, in terms of spiritual stuff. There’s a lot of ongoing internal work, and a lot of plans and other things that are taking time to develop and grow.

Things I have been focusing on lately are self-love and self-care. I don’t know if this would’ve come up had I not been shifting into a femme mood all year, but perhaps. Perhaps this is just the mindset I need to really dig into this work and make it happen. See, the problem with being a well-adjusted and functioning human being is that you don’t think you need self-care because what the hell, you just get by. I’m resilient. I can handle this. And yeah, most of the time, I can. But this is something that goes deeper, and in a lot of ways, it’s hard to express. But it’s part of that thing, you can’t love others if you don’t love yourself, yeah? It’s to do with that.

PSA: Sobek Devotional – LAST DAY TO SUBMIT

Okay, so technically, it’s nearly 2018 here in Australia, but I’ll be a bit wobbly with the timing because time zones. BUT STILL.

If you have sent something in and haven’t received a reply (or you asked about something and I never got back to you), let me know!

If you know you are definitely going to submit something but it’s not quite done, send me an email to let me know I need to wait on you!

sobekdevotional@gmail.com <— I will 100% stop nagging once 2018 hits, but until then, SEND ME THINGS. 😀

I have received so many amazing submissions, and I can’t wait to begin to put this all together for you all, so you can see how amazing it is too. Thank you to everyone who shared and spread the word and sent me things, and helped make this go better than I could have imagined. ❤

PSA: Last few days to get your Sobek Devotional submissions in!

That’s right, we’re down to the last four days! If you’ve got anything at all you want to submit to the devotional, SEND IT IN NOW –> sobekdevotional@gmail.com

DO IT.

Submissions close on Dec 31st, that’s your last chance to get your work included in the anthology! Spread this far and wide, and get your submissions in now!

Wisdom from Sobek

“If you do not go out and see the world, you will not know what to bring back to the temple.”

This was part of a longer conversation about priesting roles and How To Temple. I’ve been diving back into the Book of the Faiyum recently, and pondering what all of that means, and how to make sense of it when I don’t have a full translation. And how the Ogdoad is really caught up in all that mythology in a way I hadn’t really appreciated before, and I find that very intriguing.

And so tonight I was pondering the old temples and priesthoods, and how to do that work today. He showed me one of the temples, and we stayed in the outer courtyard. There were a lot of people milling around, making their own prayers. Sobek said it was no good mysticing my way too high into the sanctuary if it meant I forgot what ordinary people brought to Him. And He reminded me that priests back then weren’t full time priests, and that neither should we be, as modern priests. If you need a day job, so be it. And He suggested spending one season a year doing work outside the temple. Do your magic for others, do community-building work, do volunteering, do whatever work comes to you. And then take that back to the temple.

So that’s giving me a lot to chew on right now as I ponder how to wrangle this priesting thing into order and make it fit with everything else I’m being called to do. And I don’t think this is a terrible idea, either. I think it’s a good idea to spend some time each year doing more practical out-in-the-community work for a while to focus on others and see what needs doing, and not just spend all your time up in your head. It’s a grounding thing. So I might have to look at how to make that work for me, because I can see real value in that, if I do it right. But I thought I’d share in case it causes anyone else to have a ponder, too.

Sobek Devotional Update

So we’re two months in and I’ve got a bunch of hymns, and a couple of things I’m waiting on. I’m really looking forward to putting all this together, so if you’re working on something and plan to send me any submissions, please let me know, so I can get a better idea of what this thing is going to look like as it comes together. I don’t mind if you’re not done yet, but I’d like to begin figuring out how to organise this anthology, so the more I know about what’s coming in, the better.

I’m still working on a couple of mine. I think I might flesh out and re-edit the silly piece of fiction I wrote for my 30 days of Sobek, just for something different, and I’m also working on a Sobek pathworking, for anyone who’s interested in having something like that at their disposal. I might also include some of the prayers I’m writing for my 108 Prayers project, since there’s some nice ones in there already.

I’m still deciding on the essays I want to write. I’m hesitating because I don’t think I’m much of an academic scholar when it comes to Sobek stuff. I just tend to fumble along and find what I can and cobble it together into whatever seems to work. But I do want to write something on the Faiyum at the very least, and I might write something about the Sobek-Heru thing. Though with a Heru devotional in the works as well, I might be able to make a few things for that, too.

Anyway. That’s about where things are on the devotional front. We’ve got four months left until the call for submissions closes, so you’ve still got time to get something together. If you want to chat about your submissions or ask any questions, email sobekdevotional@gmail.com plz and thank you. ❤

The first time I visited Bakhu

I was sure I’d posted this meditation log already, but apparently not. Either way, this is from the Greystone Path work I did back in 2013? Something like that. This exercise was to create a mental landscape, to imagine it in your mind, as a way to introduce us to visualisation. The instruction was to imagine we were stading in a meadow at dawn (and not a generic field of wheat as it became in my mind), and to imagine the rest from there.

I’d never had much success with visualisation before, but something about this really worked for me, and I had this whole world open up for me that I hadn’t even been aware of before. I suppose some would call it astral stuff, but I waver on that point, because my work there never goes beyond Bakhu, so I don’t really know what else might be out there, except for that one pathway to Wesir’s hall in the Duat that I went to once. I don’t really travel elsewhere, this tends to me my meeting place instead, where I go to meet gods, and where gods come to meet me. That seems to be how it works, and it works well for me.

So, inspired by a thread over at The Cauldron, I thought I’d share that very first imagining, when Bakhu came alive for me for the first time. In some ways, it’s changed a lot since then, but in many others, it’s very much the same as I describe below. It’s very colour-coded in a lot of ways. Sometimes, it’s always night time, and a full moon rises over the water. And there are a lot more temples there now than there was at the beginning. A LOT more. XD But I thought I’d share, in case anyone else finds this of interest, too.

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.

Sobek devotional plans

So I think I’ve narrowed down what I am going to submit, so that’s nice. I’m trying not to fill it with too much of my own work, and make room for other people to submit stuff, which you totally should do. Don’t leave it all to me, it will not be a good book if it’s just me. XD

But I know I want to put in the Sobek rosary, the morning ritual I do, one of the awakening hymns and one of the contemplative hymns, maybe the Sobek execration rite, a ritual for Sobek’s birthday?, some sort of essay on idk me and Sobek and regional cultus and maybe one on Sobek and Renenutet or something else idk. I sort of want one personal one and one more academic one. Then a short story of some sort. I’m torn between myth retelling or just priest of Sobek (ancient or modern idk yet), or both idk. But there will be at least one short story from me. I think I want to add at least one of my artworks, too.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I sort of want to cover as much ground as I can, just because I don’t know what else will come in. So that’s my part done. And I’m glad to have a more solid idea of what I want to submit, because I had no idea for a long time. I have too much material to potentially draw from. XD I’m hoping some of you reading this are working on submissions, too, because I’d love to publish them in the anthology as well. DO IT. 😀 And yes, I am going to spam you a lot about this for the rest of the year, I want this to work, dammit. SEND ME THINGS. 😀