So anyway. Ritual! And then other reflecty type things, in which I tl;dr about all manner of things relating to Gods and such. I probably should’ve called this post R is for Rambling! Because that’s pretty much what this is. But it doesn’t sound as impressive as the title above does.

So. Ritual. I started off Wiccan, like many new Pagans do, and I left that religion behind because I hated the ritual structure. That was pretty much the only thing I didn’t like about it, as far as I can remember.

Okay, to be fair, this was back in the early 2000s, and I will admit that all I had access to was Silver Ravenwolf and Scott Cunningham. Ehhhh. You take what you can get, alright? It was all I could find in the library. You gotta start somewhere. And, IDK, I sometimes wonder if I’d found a group to learn with whether I might’ve stuck with Wicca longer than I did. Maybe the whole circle-casting bizzo might’ve worked better in a group setting for me than trying to make room for it in my TV room on my own.

But it’s a moot point, and not really worth pondering much anymore. I’m not going to go back to Wicca, but it still influences me. Not in the sense that I’m trying to make some sort of syncretic Wicca religion, but more… Okay, so it’s mainly the Wheel, because the Wheel fits in with the seasons here much better than the Egyptian seasons do. Though that’s kind of diminished a little since I finally figured out a way to swing the Kemetic calendar around so it makes more sense with regards to the seasons. The Mysteries of Wesir are now at the right time of year, as is the Solstice. Nothing jars in my head anymore.

I actually had a lot of trouble finding ritual formats that worked for me. Okay, I have been pretty much self-taught during this entire period I’ve been Pagan, for lack of any groups around I could learn from. Apart from Kemetic Orthodoxy, which was where I learnt the most about Kemetic worship and ritual, everything else has been self-taught and improvised. I’ve been experimenting for about twelve years as I try to find something that’s meaningful and works for me.

I never did Senut very often as a Kemetic Orthodox Shemsu pretty much because … Senut never really worked for me. I almost feel bad admitting it, because I know many people do find it meaningful, but it just never worked for me. But I did come to the House from about a year or two hanging out with the Akhet Temple crowd, and it wasn’t until I was more firmly entrenched in the House that I learnt how much of Akhet’s stuff was just reworked Kemetic Orthodox stuff. Which might be why neither really worked for me. It was basically the same ritual. I didn’t like Akhet’s because I was worshipping Isis at the time, not Hethert, and it just felt wrong. Which is why I jumped ship when the opportunity arose.

I also have to admit that most of my desire to hang out with other Kemetics was more about fellowship, not about finding a religion. I just wanted other people to hang out with and compare notes. And, IDK, I kind of got to the point of realising that it would probably be nigh on impossible to get any Kemetic group together where I am, or to travel over to America where the Temple was. I think I was always meant to be a solitary, so that’s what I am.

And I still … feel a sense of frustration with regards to Heru-sa-Aset. It actually doesn’t help that He and Sobek are so intertwined. They did historically share epithets, which makes it hard to tease Them both apart, and Hemet told me They were very close when I first got my RPD six years ago. So close I didn’t even realise Heru was there. And I still don’t really know He’s there, not really. He and Sobek come together, that much I know, but I just can’t seem to get through to Heru at all. There are times when I can’t understand why He talks to everyone else but not me.

Maybe the twin thing is a manifestation of this entanglement. But I do sometimes feel frustrated that pretty much every other God will talk to me except Heru. Can’t fathom what I’m doing wrong. Can’t see the woods for the trees either. Feel like I may never figure this out, and He’ll just be my Father’s Beloved, and not mine. It makes me doubt what I’m doing, that the foundations aren’t as steady as I thought they were.

But I think part of this is also part of undoing the Kemetic Orthodox worldview I stuck with for about six years before I decided to go it alone. When you’ve spent six years referring to Gods as Parents and Beloveds, and understanding things in that context, stripping all that back is really, really hard. And I need to do that, I know I need to get rid of all that baggage and approach these Gods in a completely different way, but it’s just so hard to do. Particularly because I am then at a loss for what other language to use. :/ Patrons feels … not right. Personal Gods feels … too cumbersome. But what other language is there to use? I don’t know. Might take me a while to sift through that, too.

Like, I know what Patrons means in a Pagan context. Though I tend to take it more in the Graeco-Roman context, rather than neo-Pagan, where it’s just code for ‘God I <3/work with the most’. And I … don’t really think I can define any of my God relationships as anything like a Patronage. I have too many Gods. I can’t just call Them ALL Patrons. That would cheapen the word, I think. And it’s not really correct for all of Them either. I think calling any of Them Patrons would imply things that aren’t true of our relationship.

I think I’m basically trying to find a way to distinguish between ‘Gods I actively work with/have relationships with’ and ‘Gods I will honour for festivals but that’s about it’. Does that make sense? My own Gods, and those in the rest of the pantheon I don’t really seek relationships with, unless it’s offered, of course. (Amun, Wesir, Mousai, I’m looking at you.)

I have a feeling that, while I never had much baggage from Christianity to get over when I became Pagan, I have a tonne of Kemetic Orthodox baggage to get over, now that I’m rebuilding everything from scratch. It’s like switching denominations, rather than changing religions. The language, the concepts, so many of these things are the same. And that’s half the problem with shedding all that baggage and being able to look at things from a completely different angle. This is something I struggle with, and I might need to do some sort of rebirthing/rededication thingo either at the end of the year with Hekate, or whenever else feels appropriate, to try and shed all those things I don’t need anymore.

Even then, I feel bad even admitting this, because you don’t really see this sort of thing discussed in Pagan circles. The whole multi-path thing is meant to make multiple religions easy to handle, or at least, acceptable to do, but no one really talks about switching from one Pagan religion to another, and what that entails. Moving from one worldview to another, and not trying to merge them. What needs to be shed and let go of before you can move on with a clean slate. It’s really hard to unlearn this stuff, and even I doubt if I can even do this, or if there will always be some remnants remaining that are too stubborn to be removed.

You can’t really unlearn RPD information, either. Once it’s revealed, you never really forget it. It’s hard to pretend like I never did that. That’s what rites of passage are all about. But I’m not Kemetic Orthodox anymore, so it sort of becomes a bit pointless, to me, to keep talking about my Gods within that context. But I don’t have another frame of reference to use. But how do I fit Ganesha in there? Amun and Wesir? Hekate? The Mousai? Where do they fit? Not ‘official’ beloveds. What else to call Them? I don’t have any language to use (yet) that makes all this make sense (yet). And that’s frustrating.

So much of this is about defining relationships between me and my Gods. That’s the most basic point of all this frustration. But I don’t want to use the Parent/Beloved dichotomy because it relates to a context that isn’t relevant to me anymore. I’m not a shemsu, and I have more Gods than were actually divined that are important to me that I’m not willing to ignore. I don’t want to use the Parent/Beloved framework for fear of damaging the RPD system itself, by claiming things that aren’t true. I might, perhaps, be overthinking this, but IDK. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just over-complicating things.

I feel like I’m repeating myself. Like I’ve said all of this before and it’s still ruminating in my mind, unwilling to resolve itself. How DO you shift your mind out of one Pagan religious context and into another? I think I might have to sit down and sort out what is Kemetic, and what is specifically KO, and somehow… I’m not even sure what. Ditch what I don’t need. Or something. I am going to have to do some serious unlearning. I’m not sure that’s going to be pretty to watch.

I just feel like I need to get all that KO stuff out of my head, so I can sit down and say, right, what have I got left? Probably followed by, how do I work with what I’ve got left? Or something along those lines. Because I know there are some KO specific things I still have hanging around with regards to how I see things and talk about things that perhaps aren’t needed (or even make sense) outside of a KO context.

Perhaps this is the problem that stems from a polyamourous polytheist trying to make sense of things where this is not the case for most people, or for the language I have access to. I need new ways of conceptualising and describing this in a way that makes sense and isn’t confusing for people. I need new words, or words I don’t know yet. Or some other way of talking about these things. But I’m not even sure where I’d even START with something like that. So instead, you get to read about my angst as a proxy for me trying and failing to figure this all out.

*gets out thesaurus* Clan? Herd? Pack? Household? Kindreds? Tribe? Hmm. Maybe Tribe. But maybe – Gods, I don’t even know. This is all too complicated right now. I might have to sit down and unpack all these words and see which one might work, if any might work at all.

WELL. Maybe not Kindreds, though, because I know it has an ADF/Druidry context that isn’t what I’m looking for/doesn’t relate to what I’m looking for. WELL. It kind of does, but mine’s a narrower focus. Don’t want to confuse anyone by using terminology from a group I’m not actually a part of. Part of why I don’t want to use Parent/Beloved either, cos I’m not KO anymore either. It’s too specific to those groups, I think, to take out of that context and not confuse anyone. I think that’s what I’m trying to do, to get away from group-specific language that would imply things that aren’t true for me, or imply an association with a group I do not have/do not belong to. Does that make sense? (See, I knew if I rambled on long enough, I’d figure out what my actual bloody point was with all this. )

I think I’ll leave this here, and go mull this over for a while. Next week, Sobek gets His own post! Moar information than you ever needed to know about my favourite Crocman.

I’ve rebuilt my path a few times since I became pagan at 16. I think I’m always going to have something of an eclectic streak, but it’s not as great as it once was, and I sometimes think I was just going through a period of intense experimentation as I tried lots of things to see what worked and what resonated with me. At the same time, though, I’m not sure if I had much of a choice in it, because of how one thing has necessarily led to another and it hasn’t always made sense until after the journey’s been completed. I think it’s always been some sort of syncretic though, in its own sort of way. But not as syncretic as this current path is. This is taking syncretism to another level and trying to make a cohesive whole from a whole host of fragmented pieces.

This has certainly been an interesting time. Things are becoming clearer as I forge this path together on my own. I am sometimes aware of Hekate’s guiding hand, but I still don’t feel like I’m ready to present this to Her yet. I know I am doing Her work, in forging this path from what I’ve been given, so in some ways, I don’t feel bad about not doing daily devotions and other ritual forms. I’m still trying things out to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s still Her work, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.

I’m not following any particular template for this path-building either. I’m just sort of following my nose and seeing where I end up. But getting the daily devotions written out, at least in a (mostly final) draft form has been useful. It feels like a foundation, or the beginnings of one. I tend to approach the path from the daily to the monthly to the yearly. Start small and work out. So most of this will focus on the daily part of my path, if only because that’s kind of mostly what I’ve got at the moment.

I think I mentioned a week or two ago (or I might’ve not, I don’t know) that I was basing my daily devotions on this Greek set of devotions. I looked at the outline and thought, what would a Kemetic rite look like? So instead of Eos and Helios, I have a hymn to Kheper-Ra as the Dawn Sun. Selene, Nyx, the Stars and Dream, are now a hymn to Temu-Ra, the Evening Sun. Indeed, most of the evening rite is pretty much Heliopolitan, reciting prayers and hymns to ensure Ra rises safely and is protected from the serpent. I have all the candles lit at the beginning of the evening rite, and extinguish them one by one to represent the shrinking daylight. It’s weirdly powerful to do, particularly at night.

There are other things I’ve added, like offering henu and removing the foot, and a different set of libations (I pour to Hestia, Ma’at, Wepwawet, the Ancestors, and my personal Gods), though I kept the hymn to Hestia, because I feel I ought to honour Her, since She kind of owns our new hearth. I also kept the hymn to Sleep, because I think it’s rather pretty. (I’m using the 1792 translation of the Orphic Hymns linked to in the Greek devotions. No, my brain has not left that time period yet. Halp.)

It took me longer than I thought to get any sort of daily devotional rite together. I knew it wasn’t going to be anything remotely priestly, because I ain’t a priest. The way I see it, a priest needs a community to serve, and I ain’t got one of those, so I won’t worry myself with trying to recreate or keep myself to the State rites. I’d rather concentrate on the more personal side of things. So while I do ‘awaken’ my Gods in greeting in the morning rite, it’s not really a Priestly thing. It’s more a ‘good morning’ sort of thing. I awaken Ra, too.

They are rites perfectly tailored to my particular path and Gods, though. I wouldn’t suggest this is how every weird Graeco-Kemetic sort should do daily devotions either. It’s my way, but not the only way, and I’d have to modify them if I was going to make them more generic. It’s kind of great if you like Sobek, Aset, and Heru-sa-Aset and don’t mind greeting Them every day, though. That said, have the basic run-down for each rite:

The Morning Rite
Wash hands, mouth, and face/have shower and dress (I don’t have a bath anymore)
Approach the shrine, offer henu, and unveil
Light lamp or candle
Hymn to Hestia (#84)
(Optional) Light incense
Hymn to Kheper-Ra and light candle
Hymn to Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset and light candle
Hymn to Aset and light candle
Hymns to any Gods in festival
Pour libations to Hestia, Ma’at, Wepwawet, the Ancestors, and personal Gods/patrons
Make offerings, and/or have personal prayer time.
Hymn of Awakening (final awakening prayer to all the Gods)
Extinguish lamp or candle
Remove the foot

The Evening Rite
Wash hands, mouth, and face/have shower and dress
Approach the shrine and offer henu
Light all candles
Hymn to Hestia (#84)
(Optional) Light incense
Hymn to Temu-Ra, and extinguish candle
Hymn to Sobek, and extinguish candle
Hymn to Aset-Nut, and extinguish candle
Hymn to Sleep (#85)
Pour libations to Hestia, Ma’at, Wepwawet, the Ancestors, and personal Gods/patrons
Make offerings, or have personal prayer time.
Hymn of the Descent into Nut (Like the awakening hymn, but about the descent instead)
Extinguish any remaining candles
Offer henu and veil the shrine
Remove the foot

Other notes:
- I veil my head during both rites, even if I don’t choose robes, but clean street clothes.
- Water libations are disposed of in the garden
- Food offerings are consumed; reversion of offerings is part of my practice. It’s not Greek, but I’m not Greek either. I’m approaching this from a Kemetic perspective, not a Greek one. (WELL. Akhu food offerings are disposed of, but those aren’t substantial, so I don’t mind that.) It also ties in with issues of food scarcity and not wasting good food. I couldn’t bare to throw food offerings away every day once I’d offered them. I’d rather share my food with Them.
- Because incense is a migraine trigger for me if I don’t take care with it, I’m leaving it as optional, depending on how I feel and whether I can ventilate the room properly (i.e. open the window), which is hard to do in winter when it’s cold.

IDK. Maybe no one would do it my way. I still want some sort of nighttime hymn for Heru for the evening rite, but still figuring out the right words to say. A shortened version of these prayers would be simply the hymn to Hestia, the Hymn to Kheper/Temu, and the final prayer, without anything else bar lighting a candle or two.

Aset-Nut is like Wesir-Ra for me, the light/dark duality thingo where Aset is the Eye of Ra, and a solar Goddess, the Female Ra, and Nut is the starry night sky. That’s why it’s to Aset-Nut. She protects the boat during the day and at night.

Also, I think Khepera encouraged the pun on His name. I take no blame for that one.

What took the most time was trying to write hymns for Kheper-Ra and Temu-Ra based on what little I could grasp from the sources I had available to me. I didn’t want them to be inauthentic hymns, even if I composed them myself based on what I could find. I might’ve gone off Budge’s translations, and maybe they’re not entirely accurate, but I’m not entirely worried about that. I just wanted something I could get inspiration from and turn into something better. And shorter, in many cases. I wanted a rite that was no more than about fifteen minutes all up, including personal prayer time and sharing offerings.

That said, I’m still figuring out the timings. When do I do them? What’s best for me and my schedule? That’s the tricky one. It has to be intuitive for me, and seem somehow a natural time for me to be in shrine, but at the same time, not so wild or inflexible I can’t keep to it. So that’s still being experimented with, to see which time is best for me to do these things.

I’m at the point of doing trial runs with the rites, to see what works, and whether I need anything I don’t already have. Like, are the libation bowls I have at the moment working, or should I switch them? How does it sound when I actually recite the whole rite from start to finish? How do the actions all work together? Those sort of things. It’s like doing dress rehearsals. Going through it all beforehand to work out the kinks.

I’m sure you’re bored about hearing about my rites, though. I use my calendar to determine which Gods are in festival and should be honoured. I’ve kind of been gathering prayers from my old KO calendars and ones from other sources, to compile into a big book of prayers/hymns for each God in festival I need. (Well, to write into my little daily prayer book, but whatever. It’s not a publishable book, if that’s what you were thinking though.) I picked up this little leather notebook last weekend at the mediaeval fair we went to down in Balingup, and it’s become my little daily prayer book. A small version of my grimoire I intend to put to practical use, while my grimoire now has more freedom to be more of a journal than a ritual book. Which is good, because it’s big and bulky and hard to use in ritual.

What do I have to do next? Erm, figure out which Greek and/or Roman holidays I want to slip into my calendar. I’m still researching those, because I don’t know them very well. Apart from deipnon/noumenia for Hekate every dark moon, I’m still figuring that out. I know I need to figure out something for the Muses, since They’ve taken the time to hang about and introduce themselves, and I’d maybe like something for Apollo as well, and maybe Hermes. But this is still work that needs to be done, so I can’t really say what will come of all that yet. I just know it needs to be done. If this is meant to be a syncretic path, I’d better do some syncretising.

More as I figure all this shit out. Over and out. Because it’s nearly 1am and I’m bloody tired. Also, 1842 words, WordPress? Yeah, this is long enough. *signs off*

I hesitated in even doing this topic at all, for fear that all I’d have to say is something like, ‘YAY QUEER GODS’ and ‘I DON’T KNOW’. Because this isn’t really a Thing, at least not a Thing that can be defined with a single definition. At the same time, I feel I ought to write about it anyway, because it’s something that needs to be discussed more within Pagan circles.

At the same time, though, whatever I talk about here isn’t some definitive thing either. It’s probably just going to end up as my musings on what queer paganism means to me, and if anyone gets anything out of it, awesome. Which is my approach for all these sort of things. These are just my thoughts, nothing more. I don’t have all the answers, nor do I want to, and I feel that a thing like queer paganism is something that needs to be defined for yourself.

I might focus more on genderqueerness/non-binary/third-gender/other genders more than sexual orientation, if only because that’s where my interest lies. I’m genderqueer myself, so that’s why I would emphasis that. Plus, I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t think there are any current Pagan traditions that emphasis genderqueerness/gender diversity in this way, whereas there are a few gay pagan groups. I feel like there’s nothing out there for us non-binary folks. I am happy to be mistaken, though.

I pencilled in this topic for one of my Q entries way back when I first started these Pagan Blog Project posts, and I think I’ve drafted it about seven times since then. I never quite know what to say about it, apart from I’d like my Paganism to have Gods that defy human bodies and biologies, and at the same time, reflect more widely the actual gender and sexual diversity of humanity.

It’s funny to think on that, now. I kind of had a spark of inspiration. Once I decoupled Gods having offspring from heteronormative reproduction, it all felt… easier?

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but it was in relation to the Wheel and thinking about Aset/Isis and Wesir, and harvest festivals, I think. Aset, to me, is a shapeshifter. She has a gender, but it’s not necessarily related to how She chooses to appear. She can be anything.

I remember musing about the Horned Goddess, and how I was wondering if there was a consort with a transman’s body, and somehow that went to, ‘Wesir is trans*’. Now, I know this is UPG, and I’m not necessarily suggesting His mythos is meant to be read this way. But it was the whole Aset creating a new penis for Him that got me thinking about it. The false penis and the false beard, and how He could be queered in this way. Aset conceived Heru with Him using Her magic. Once I got over the ‘biological repoduction = how Gods make other Gods’, the idea of Aset’s magic alone bringing this child Heru to life, along with Wesir’s creative power was actually kind of awesome to think about.

I have occasionally thought my Horned Goddess as Hethert, or maybe Aset. I think, perhaps, that They share a similar sort of energy, because the Horned Goddess feels very new compared to Hethert and Aset, and She has Her own different sort of energy and attributions. In some ways, She’s also a bit Bast and Artemis, and I’m sure there’s some Aphrodite in there too. The Horned Goddess is all of these things, and something else entirely.

I always kept wondering if She had a transman consort, and perhaps Her reluctance to introduce me was because I hadn’t quite realised the whole ‘Gods don’t need genitals to make baby Gods’ thing. It seems like such an obvious thing to realise, that of course Gods don’t need to reproduce the way we do. They have MAGIC and other awesome powers. They can ‘give birth’ to Gods in ways we can’t even imagine because They aren’t confined to a physical biological reality like we are. They are the gender to our sex, if that makes sense.

Maybe this transman consort, this transgendered Wesir, isn’t Wesir, but might lead to who He might be. All I have is the image of the false beard and the strap-on penis, all rolled into a harvest God. I haven’t even figured out if He’s a Dying God or not, or what I might call Him. I’m thinking of this also in relation to my (queer) Wheel, and Lammas, which I’ve always associated with Wesir. So I’ve got down Wesir God of the Grains, and Aset of the Green Earth as the Gods I plan to honour at Lammas. I know that Wesir epithet is historical, but I can’t remember if that Aset one is. It just sort of came out that way, and it’s stuck. Then again, it’s very hard to have Aset without Wesir, or Wesir without Aset. The two kind of come together like that.

But I still love the idea of Wesir, or a God like Him, as a transman, with a flat, scarred, chest, the false beard, and the strap-on, being quietly masculine and awesome in His own way. I can sort of see Him smiling at me as I imagine this. He’s still strong and masculine, He’s still Wesir the Dead God, but the body doesn’t matter. It’s imperfect, but that doesn’t matter. He’s still Wesir, with His scarred imperfect body, and Aset will still love Him.

I can’t remember if the ‘Wesir gets cut into pieces’ thing was a Kemetic thing, or a Greek thing, or both, and I’m not in any position to check right now as I’m writing this in a motel room in Bridgetown. But I have this image of Him not as a mummy all in bandages, but with scars all over His body. And I suppose I can take that and queer it. But I’m still thinking my way through those thoughts, and how I can use those in a queer paganism sort of way.

Djehuty’s a bit like that too, being gender-bendy, except He’s more androgynously male. Like, I wouldn’t refer to Him as anything other than male, but He just has no … He just doesn’t feel male at all. And I know others have experienced this with Djehuty, too, if I remember correctly.

Then again, Sobek’s like this, with His bendy gender and His maternal instincts. I’m not sure if other pantheons are as bendy as the Kemetic Gods seem to be, though. This could also just be my weird UPG, and that Gods tend to appear somewhat queerly gendered to me as that’s the face I’ll most likely recognise. The Mousai Titanides admitted that was what They did to get my attention. So maybe it’s just a me thing, that I get a lot of queer readings of Gods because that’s what I’ll most recognise. That’s what I’ll relate to the most.

I still find it … quite touching that Gods would think about that. That They would have the sensitivity? to figure out how we might best recognise Them. I mean, obviously Gods want us to realise They’re trying to get our attention, so perhaps it’s not that surprising, but IDK. I still find it quite touching that They even think about that at all.

Have I meandered enough? *does word count* I think 1200+ words is enough. I might leave this here, and then it’s done.

I also wanted to do Queer Paganism for one of my Q entries, but I still don’t know what to write about that either, so I’m going to leave that one for next week, or, alternatively, until I have more of an idea of what it is apart from ‘I DON’T KNOW’ and ‘QUEER GODS YAY’, which wouldn’t make for much of a post.

So, in light of that, this week’s is about questioning and doubt. Because I’ve been feeling a lot of that lately as well, and it’s been on my mind. I’ve been having this period where I’m just disconnected from everything. I know the Gods are there; I just can’t feel Them. I don’t often feel that way, but it kind of hit me hard, and I wasn’t expecting it. I was trying to get back into the habit of daily devotions, and the rite I was using wasn’t calling to me. I felt like I was just going through the motions, and there was no reason to do it. I didn’t feel anything for it, so I stopped.

That made me step back and think about what it is I need and want in a daily devotion. And I kept thinking about what I’d learnt from Judaism, and I kept looking at this Hellenic set of devotions, and it nagged at me. Maybe I could use that as a template, or at least as a starting point, and build a Graeco-Kemetic devotional rite from there. So that’s the current ponderous job.

But I’m kind of digressing, because if I wanted to write about daily devotions, I’d do so, and not about what I want to write about here. It was the period before that inspiration that I wanted to look into more, because I did feel sometimes like I was mad, that talking to Gods was futile, and it was all in my head. I was just playing pretend, and there was nothing there. I… don’t know if this is a relic of reading about Judaism for so long, and still being somewhat stuck in that sort of mindset, where I had to keep looking at things from that perspective as I wrote that damn story, and having a schizophrenic incarnate Archancel  as a main character. Maybe it’s also just the fallow quiet time too, it being the dead of winter, where the Gods are off tending to Ma’at, and we don’t need to chat at the moment. Maybe it’s me being dense and just not hearing properly, too. Maybe it’s a combination of all of them. I don’t know.

But I tend to question everything anyway. I find it hard to just accept any spiritual experience without question, particularly if it’s UPG, like with my Celestial Twins thing. I still don’t have much of a historical base for it either, but I’m not overly concerned about that. More… finding out why They might want this sort of thing with me. I still don’t particularly know, but it does provide an answer for why They are so close to each other. Heru-sa-Aset is still almost impossible for me to connect to, though. I just can’t find the right way to get Him to talk to me, like He seems to do with everyone else. I have only felt His presence once. I have felt Set around more often than I have felt Heru-sa-Aset. This makes me wonder why I even bother. At what point do you stop trying to contact a God when you keep getting nowhere? Why is He apparently so important to me when He remains so silent? I still struggle with these questions, and even if He is Harpocrates, this doesn’t really help. I begin to doubt He’s really there at all, and I’ve wasted five years chasing after a God who was not there.

There are times now when I’m not even sure what it is I’m doing, trying to build this syncretic path. I don’t know what it is I’m meant to be building. I don’t know what it’s all meant to look like. I’ve been given a whole bag full of puzzle pieces, but not the picture they make once I put them all together. So everything becomes experimental. Put a few things together, try it out, and see if it works. Keep what does, discard what doesn’t, which is mostly how I work anyway. But it is frustrating, and I still sometimes wonder if I’m heading in the right direction. I haven’t got a lot of feedback from my Gods about this, but assuming that Them not stepping in means I’m doing alright isn’t a sure thing. I don’t like being that confident about what silence means. I mean, I hesitate to say it’s disapproval as much as I hesitate to say it’s approval. It’s just silence, and I have to rely on other ways of figuring out what I’m meant to be doing.

At the same time, though, I really don’t want to get to the sort of stage where I’m Absolutely Confident About Everything and I stop questioning and doubting my path. I need that self-check to keep me grounded and to make sure I don’t get so caught up in myself that I end up semi-delusional or something. I need to check and double-check, and look up information, and just make sure that what I’m experiencing is alright, that it’s not just me being weird or crazy. I think that sort of self-checking is important for any spiritual path, to keep you grounded and connected with reality. Question everything. Question why you believe this, and not that, and don’t stop until you have a satisfactory answer.

I don’t know. I feel like this is where I copypasta my entry on Faith, because that’s pretty much my guide. I just have to trust my Gods know what They’re doing, and that They’ll let me know if I’m straying off-course. I’m not sure what else I can reasonably do, apart from try things out, experiment, and figure out what works and is needed for the path I’m building now. I feel like this is a path that needs to be complete, and needs to have a solid foundation, and that requires a lot of work. I’m not even sure when that will be done. I’m assuming this will stop at some point, but I’m not sure when. I need to figure out so much to make any of this work. I feel like I should get it to the point where it could be teachable to someone else, even if I never get a chance to do that. It should be complete enough to teach to someone else.

In the meantime, I’ll keep asking questions, and hope I get some answers.

I’ve always been a solitary Pagan. Mostly out of choice, and partly out of having no one else to practice with. I think practing with someone else only works if you share enough of a religious path to feel like you’re both doing the same things. But I think my path is one that is so much my own that finding someone else with enough in common would be quite difficult.

I’ve talked about it before, that there is a serious lack of Pagans in Australia. The last census had that number at about 30,000 declared Pagans in the whole country. That’s all the regognisably Pagan groups noted in the census, at any rate. And out of those groups, Wicca was the most popular. So the likelihood of finding anyone compatible enough to practice with is realistically difficult. Because of that, I’ve never bothered seriously looking for a group to practice with. Added to that is the fact that I’ve never particularly wanted to get involved with group practice anyway, so all in all, I was always going to walk a solitary path.

I mean, there’s still a small part of me that would like to experience group ritual one day, if only so I know what it feels like, but it would have to be the right kind of group, and rather than seek them out, I’d rather just leave it in the hands of the Cosmos. If it happens, it’ll happen. But this is very much an optional part of my path, so I don’t feel like I can’t continue practicing unless I’m with a group.

The groups I have been involved with have all been online groups, and pretty much what made me initially join them was a desire for fellowship. I was just starting out as a Pagan, and I wanted other Pagans to talk to, so I could learn from them and figure out what on earth I was meant to do when worshipping Kemetic Gods. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a shared religious tradition to be a part of. I found one in Kemetic Orthodoxy, but it wasn’t what I originally went there for. And even then, I stayed until I’d learnt all I could from them. For me, it was never going to be a forever thing.

I still think about that sometimes. Why I end up with this group or that, why am I drawn to this religion or that one, why is this important. So much of my path is about spiritual wandering. I’ve spent the last three months researching Judaism for a big bang fic, and in the process, learnt a bunch of things I can use for my own path. Perhaps a Jewish Archangel otherkin AU fic wasn’t as accidental as I thought it was.

I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m very much of a group person anyway. I walk alone, and don’t expect anyone to be with me. It’s just my path, and it goes where it will. And, yeah, sometimes, that can be lonely. The solitary path is a lonely one. I think that’s why Amun wanted to be companions. So I’m not walking alone. Which is an odd thing to realise, but there you go. Because that was the word He used. He wanted us to be companions. That’s… more overwhelming to realise than I’d anticipated. A God I’d never worked with before didn’t want me to be lonely, so He turned up and asked to be friends. Wow. That’s… really amazing, and humbling.

It’s not like I was short of Gods either. I’ve always got Sobek with me, and Aset/Isis, and I had Hekate with me at the start of the year. But I was thinking about this before. There was a threat over at The Cauldron asking what people don’t feel comfortable going to their Gos about. For me, there’s not much I wouldn’t tell Them.

But at the same time, I do see a difference between the act of going to my Father, Sobek, and going to Amun, who’s outside of all that. He never came up in my RPD, and I never had a Beloved divination for Him, so He is completely outside the family of Gods I got at my RPD. And there’s a different dynamic between telling something to your Parent(s), and tellling something to a friend. I did realise that as I was writing up my reply for that thread. I didn’t know I needed something like that, that there was an impartial God watching over me who I could talk to if I needed it. Which is weird, because, mythically, Sobek and Nit are addressed as the impartial judges. But for me, I have Amun. He’s just there, if I need it.

Did I mention I’m making Him a box shrine? He wants an empty box shrine, which I’m going to paint/craft/make for Him. I’m not sure where it’ll sit, but if He wants one, He’ll get it. I’ll probably have some sort of candle that goes with it, but that’s about it. …I might put some ears on it. He’s just indicated He wants ears. So I can whisper to Him, and He will hear me.

(This entry has gone in a weird direction. Did anyone else notice that?)

I mean, I know how Amun fits into my worldview now. And Sobek is Amun etc. I suppose I just didn’t realise how important Amun was going to end up being when He first turned up in my life a couple of years ago.

…2010 was a weird year, looking back on it. Everything fucking changed then. Then again, it was the Year of Zep-Tepi, of the first time. I shouldn’t be surprised that’s when my Gods started leading me down a new path. I mean, I even called it when the Oracle of Aset came out that year. But in some ways, I’m still bloody surprised at just how much has changed.

This path is still a solitary one. In some ways, it isn’t to be shared by other people. Sometimes with, depending on what can be shared, but I’m it. I’m the only one who can walk this path. The only one expected to walk this path. I think that’s why I cherish online communities so much, when I find ones I like, because even if we’re not walking the same path, I’ve still got companions to talk to, who’ll understand when I talk about spiritual things. Sometimes I need that, to be able to talk to people who’ll understand. I think that’s what I need out of a group more than anything else. Support and friendship, even if we’re all doing completely different work.

Because, see, Henadology’s page on Sobek talks about the only name for Sobek’s father that exists: Senuy, the two brothers. Nit, of course, is His mother. I remember reading that and realising I’d seen Senuy around somewhere before, elsewhere, but couldn’t quite remember where. But it was about Sobek somehow.

With my Nine Elements system, Tem, Nit, and Amun are all involved, too, as representatives of the primordial creative potential in the world. Sobek shares some of this power too, but He comes from Them. And it got me thinking, who are these two brothers? Why would Sobek have three parents?

I was thinking about this yesterday, and went on a walking meditation around the suburb with my music going, trying to figure it out. It seems really obvious now that I think about it. But of course it was a (UPG) reference to Tem and Amun. I’m not claiming any historical truth that They’re brothers, or that I have stumbled upon the One Truth about Sobek’s parents, but for me, this makes sense. It fits in with how I see the world.

Zero, One, and Infinity combine to create/give birth to/reveal Sobek and Heru-sa. Sobek needs to be born first so Xe can tend to Harpocrates within the Cosmic Egg. Sobek sparks the birth of the first Sun. And thus, Creation happens. Or something to that effect. (I may need to rewrite the myth, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.)

The parallels with Castor and Pollux are kind of here too. But I’m not quite at the point where I can really articulate those properly yet. I can see them, I feel like I’m close to grasping it, but I’m not quite there yet. Even if it’s just UPG, it’s still making sense of the world for me, and making my worldview complete, so it’s important for me to figure out. I doubt They’d have sent me off trying to figure this out if it wasn’t important to my path.

I think I might stop my musings here for the moment. I feel like I’ve got my head in the stars, looking at the Big Bang for the first time, and I need to stop and have lunch. And do some housecleaning. And try to digest this Mystery and what it means.

Taking a new religious name is a way of naming yourself. Most of the time, we’re given names by our parents, ones we don’t choose and have to live with unless we decide to change them and pick something else. Choosing your own name can be a powerful experience, and it can bring a lot of confidence with it. ‘This is who I really am’, ‘this is what I want the world to call me’, these are powerful things one can do, and sometimes give a sense of control over your own identity. Sometimes, too, it’s a way of escaping a name you were given but have never identified with for whatever reason. People choose names for themselves for a variety of reasons, and this extends to choosing religious or Craft names for Pagans. Because names are such a personal thing, I try not to judge people based on their chosen Craft names, even if they sound daft. You never know, that person calling themselves Merriweather Moonshine might have some very good reasons for using that name that you might not be aware of. So I try to respect that.

I know I had a few weird Craft names when I was just starting out. I was getting into Paganism in the late 90s/early 2000s and a lot of what I had access to was neoWiccan materials, most of which emphasised the ‘picking your Craft name’ thing based on colours, metals, crystals, animals, etc. It seemed like it was just the big thing at the time, that Craft names were meant to be that sort of thing, a combination of words like Merriweather Moonshine Ravenwings (or something else just as weird) that meant something to you. Those books are still around today, and this hasn’t really gone away. I feel like it’s something many new pagans go through as they begin to pick out their path.

Silver GhostCat was one of my first Craft names, and Argento Occhi was another. The only other one I can think of that I used back then was Akarhu Tesenisis, based off a (blatant self-insert) character I’d created some time before. It’s strange to think back on them, because even though they’re not names I use anymore, they still mark that part of my path, and I can still relate to them on a weird level. The older I get, and the more experienced I become as a pagan, the more I can read into them. I can see meaning there that I couldn’t see when I was using them. For me, that’s an important aspect of all these Craft names. Maybe they sound daft to my 28 year old self, but they mark that time for me, when I was a baby Pagan and just learning about the path I was beginning to walk.

As I was becoming more Kemetic and left Wicca behind, I took on more Kemetic names as I started to get stuck into learning hieroglyphics. MerytDjehuty (Beloved of Djehuty) was one, and I used that more extensively than the others, particularly online. SatSobek (Daughter of Sobek) was another I used online. I also had one for Aset, but it was never as meaningful as those two were. How I had come to know that, when I was finally divined as a Kemetic Orthodox shemsu, that Sobek would be my Dad, and Djehuty my Beloved, I don’t know. But I was using those names 3-4 years before that divination. Perhaps I always knew.

At the time, I also found another name, a secret name, that was only known to me and the Gods. Until then, all my Craft names had been public, but this one, a male name, was to remain secret. It has two meanings, and the more I look into them, and see how they relate to my path now, the deeper it gets, and the more I come to relate to that name and what it means to have that name.

IbDjehuty was another of my names, and another I used extensively online. It is the only one that’s been given to me. I had this awesomely crazy dream back in 2003/4 or thereabouts in which Djehuty gave me that name, appearing as Tommy Lee Jones in a daft movie theatre. The name was the name of a movie I was seeing, IbDjehuty’s Temple, and I parsed the name in English as read the title. (It was a weird dream, but hey, it started a trend of my Gods taking on odd forms to talk to me. So. /weird.)

The next name I acquired was my Shemsu name as I joined Kemetic Orthodoxy properly as a Shemsu. The name I was given was Sobekemiti, with the ridiculously adorable meaning of ‘Sobek is my Daddy’. N’aww. <3 It’s the one Kemetic name I use most often now, particularly among Kemetic recon circles, as it was the name I was known by for five years. Most of my Kemetic path has been practised under that name, and most of my Kemetic friends are most familiar with it, so I use it. It still has a lot of meaning attached to it, the more I delve into it, and even though I’m not Kemetic Orthodox anymore, I still have my name. When I became a Shemsu all those years ago, when I was named, I vowed to learn the secrets of that name, and six years down the track, it’s still slowly revealing its secrets.

But my path isn’t purely Kemetic anymore, and as I took on a multipath practise (is it multipath? I have no idea anymore), it didn’t seem appropriate to use my Shemsu name for everything. It wasn’t meant to be used for that. So, after so many years without a ‘Craft name’, it was time to find a new one. One more geared towards a more general Pagan audience that was also easier to pronounce.

At the time, Isis was drawing me back to Her, and to a Roman style of worship, and I took on a Roman name for Her. She said it was appropriate to do so. When in Rome, etc. So C. Aur. Isidora Aegyptia was the name I (half-)chose. Isis pretty much insisted on the latter part (the cognomen) because She always wanted me to remember that I belong to the Egyptian Isis. (Even though Isidora is kinda Greek-ish, rather than an actual Roman name. But whatever. I think this is to make it a Graeco-Roman name, so I don’t need a Greek name too.) The choice of praenomen and nomen was up to me, and after a lot of indecision, I picked Gaia Aurelia. It also had to be feminine. Isis wanted me to have a feminine name. I … don’t think it was distinctly proper Roman practice for females to be called by their cognomen, but it’s right for this name, so the very short one name form is Isidora, or C. Aur. Isidora in abbreviated form.

And that brings us back to Arden  Star, the last of my new names. It was partly last NaNo’s fault, because I spent the time writing about Hekate and keys and odd magical forest rites in the West Midlands, so having the Forest of Arden as a namesake was… not entirely unexpected. (This is the RL one that no longer exists, not the one from Shakespeare.) Hekate and Isis are the Star that’s being referenced, as far as I can tell.

It’s a weird sort of name, because I know it makes sense to me, and I know there are layers of meaning here, but I’m not at the stage yet where I can articulate them. I’m not entirely ruling out it being something to do with the Horned Goddess either, though I haven’t entirely puzzled that out yet either. But I like it, and it’s not a bad general Pagan name. ‘Star forest’ is another thing I need to meditate on, as that was almost part of the name, too. This name went down a lot of different paths before it settled down.

This is an interesting topic to write about at this time, too, as lately, I’ve been having one of those weird urges to legally change my name, since my uni degree is almost over omg. I don’t know why I’m suddenly now panicking about having my birth name on my degree, but I am. I haven’t made a decision either way though, not yet. I haven’t even decided what to change it to, let alone gathered the funds to do it yet. But if I decide to do it, I want to get it done before I graduate. I feel like I’ve been calling myself Sasha for nigh on eight years now, and Laura just doesn’t fit anymore. But I’m still thinking about that. (And yet, I don’t mind being called ‘Lil’, which is a short form of my middle name. So. /I have no idea.)

I think I’ll leave this here for now, and make sure this is posted on the right day before I go catch up on all the tele I’ve been downloading recently that I need to catch up on. (and not stay up til 4:30am. >_>)

I must admit that Mabon is one of those festivals I tend to have a bit of a mental blank with regards to what it’s actually about. The name sounds too similar (the way I pronounce it does, anyway) to May (Day) that I have a feeling I end up equating it with Beltaine or something, when it’s nothing of the sort. I’m not sure if anyone else does that, but that’s me, I suppose. Mabon isn’t even in May. WTF, brain.

For the confused, Mabon is generally celebrated around September 20(ish) in the Northern Hemisphere, and around March 20(ish) in the Southern Hemisphere. I have no idea where I get May from, apart from the name itself, Mabon. I am terrible at remembering the date of this Sabbat.

Mabon is the Autumn Equinox, and it’s one of those weird Sabbats where I … mark it, but don’t really have the same sort of feelings about it that I do for Litha or Lammas, for example. It’s a harvest festival, and I suppose I can sort of get into that whole ‘second harvest’ sort of thing, but it’s not everything to me.

In figuring out my own Wheel and my own Sabbat corresponcences, I’ve penciled in festivals for Wesir-Ra for both Equinoxes. It was when I heard Wesir called ‘the dark side of Ra’ that I began to get fascinated with the idea of Wesir-Ra. The Lord of the Bright Sun, and the Lord of the Dark Underworld. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find Ra easier to understand in this context than just Ra Himself. Perhaps that’s because Ra is so bright it’s easier to see Him through a prism and see Him indirectly, or in this case, through Wesir.

Amun is also described this way, too, as the hidden Sun. But I see Amun-Ra differently to Wesir-Ra. Amun-Ra is the solar eclipse, with the dark centre, and only the corona showing. Wesir-Ra is more of a light/dark duality sort of thing. Perhaps more appropriately depicted as a yin/yang symbol. Light and Dark are equal partners here, whereas Amun is hidden behind Ra, unseen. That’s the difference. Heat/cold, light/dark, living/dead, bright/dim, seen/unseen, that is Wesir-Ra. Amun-Ra doesn’t have those same qualities, at least not to me.

I like the idea of having a God like Wesir-Ra as part of my Equinox rites if only because I like the duality, and I like the idea of having that kind of dual God at the time of year when night and day are equal. Of course, at the Autum Equinox, Ra’s light is dimming, and giving way to Wesir in preparation for His death and descent at Samhain when the Mysteries of Wesir fall.

I have thought about just using Wesir and Ra for the whole Wheel, but I need to honour Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset too, and I honour Them at the Solstices as Sobek-as-Amun and Heru-as-Ra. I feel it’s so appropriate to honour Harpocrates/Heru-pa-khered as the new-born Sun at Yule, and Heru-sa-Aset the Avenger at Litha, which is why I have that dichotomy there. Heru-sa fits the Solstices better than Wesir-Ra does.

But I’ve sort of split the year into two anyway, with the Solstices and Equinoxes as the major narrative, and the other cross-quarter days being more self-focused and minor(ish) in comparison to the major Sabbats. I can’t remember if this is a traditional way to split the year (I think so? But I can’t remember where I read that, so I can’t be sure), but it makes sense to me. It has a nice balance of self and Universe/Cosmos, so that the Wheel doesn’t feel imbalanced towards either end of the spectrum. That’s important to me, anyway, which is why I’ve been a little more flexible with the cross-quarter days and their meanings so I can tailor them to my own needs.

There are other posts that talk about Litha properly, with historical information and Sabbatical information and such that you can use to refer to. This isn’t that kind of post. I have kind of rambled on about Litha and Yule and other assorted things like Dinotopia, and Time, and solar eclipses. It’s that sort of post.

Midsummer’s one of those weird Sabbats for me. It falls just before Christmas where I am, and with all the busy-ness of that time of year, I don’t always do much for Litha at all. I do acknowledge the day, but with Christmas and my birthday just around the corner, it’s better for me to use the day as more of a day of rest, to soak up some extra solar energy to keep me going once Christmas hits.

In that sense, it is a holiday that, for me, seems at odds with that time of year, and yet, it would feel equally wrong to celebrate it in the middle of winter. Perhaps I just haven’t figured Litha out yet. I don’t know. My tentative calendar for who I might honour at this time says Litha is for Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset. I wouldn’t call it a stretch to also include Ra, and all His Eyes, like Sekhmet, Bast, Hethert, Aset, etc. It’s the point at which the Sun is at its peak, which is a great time for solar Gods.

And, also, adult Heru, too, not the child who was born at Yule. This is Heru as King, Heru who has avenged His father Wesir, and taken the throne. Heru Glorious in Victory. That Heru. Sobek represents the strength of the Nisut, and thus Heru takes His strength from Sobek here, as well as Sobek being at His peak too. Both are powerful rulers, and with Aset supporting the throne, and Wesir in place in the Duat, all is right with the world.

But I keep getting reminded of the syncretic God Wesir-Ra. I am still fascinated with Him, and the light/dark duality He offers. Wesir as the dark side of the Sun fascinates me. I had never particularly considered Him in this role until I read that somewhere else, and it’s stuck. I love that imagery, the meaning behind that image. This also connects Him to Amun, too, as Amun is also seen in this way, as Amun is sometimes considered the hidden form of Ra. He is hidden in darkness, unable to be seen, to be known, as Ra shines brightly.

Which just reminds me of a solar eclipse, where the disc of the sun goes dark, and all you can see is the corona shining out from around the edges. That’s Amun-Ra, to me. The dark hidden sun shining down on Earth. But like an eclipse, while there is light, there is also the dark shadow racing across the ground. With light comes darkness. The two are intertwined. At Litha, light is succeeding over darkness, but after the Solstice, darkness begins to take power again as the days get shorter. Once summer tails off into Autumn, the dark shadow of winter rushes up behind us, bringing the cold and darkness with us until we hit Yule, and the Sun is born again to chase away the darkness.

This is a bit of a more wandering sort of post than I had anticipated, but I’m sitting here, on the couch, a few days out from Yule, and thinking about Midsummer makes me anticipate the return of the Sun. The new-born Sun is soon to be born, and the darkness will soon give way to the light. Wesir will descend, and Ra will rise. Amun hides; Ra shines through to bring light, warmth, and life to the cold Earth.

I think about Time too. Dinotopia was the first exposure I had to a concept of Time as a spiral, and it’s stuck with me. I love the icea of a spiral, and cycles over the linear time of much of Western society. Nothing every really ends. It just keeps on going. The Earth keeps on spinning, the seasons keep turning, and so on, and so it goes. Always spinning and circling, spiralling in on top of itself. Nothing ever really ends, nor really begins either. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as I figure out how to piece together a Wheel and calendar I can use. There are marker points, that’s what the Sabbats and such are for. I trace my year from Yule to Yule. The Sun is born, so the Year Dies. One cycle ends, another begins. Death gives way to Life. It is this duality I adore.

At Litha, when the Sun is at its peak, so the Darkness is at its lowest. Life abounds, death is going hungry. But It is a pause, nothing more, as the cycles turn and spiral forever onwards into the future. At Yule next week, I will rejoice at the new-born Sun. In six months, when I honour Litha, I will honour the peak of the Sun, and bid Xem goodbye as we have one last hurrah before the darkness creeps back in again.

So, this week is Lammas, the first of the harvest Sabbats, celebrated at the start of August in the Northern Hemisphere, and at the start of Februrary in the Southern Hemisphere. I also call it Lammas and not Lughnasadh because it’s easier to pronounce, I’m not actually honouring Lugh, and I’m not Celtic enough, with regards to my path, to use that name. So Lammas it is.

It’s not one of my top faves, but it always gives me the image of Autumn, of snuggling into Autumn in the forest as it gets cooler and more like the weather I dig. We start making stews and soups, and leave the heat of summer behind. I love that. Because Autumn is my favourite season.

I like to imagine that anyway, because in reality, early February is when Summer is still kicking on, and it doesn’t really subside til late March. I may have to rejig my calendar to match this, because it feels weird to celebrate Lammas in the middle of bloody summer. (I wonder how that would even work… *ponders*)

I think I’ll shift just Lammas into March, because the way I’ve got my calendar worked out, Lammas, as a harvest festival is just after where I have my Wep Ronpet celebrations. Far too early to harvest anything. Putting it in March makes a bit more sense, and even if March can still be summery, it’s the last bit of summer, and it’s all downhill from there. Then we hit Mabon, and go from there. (I won’t shift Solstices/Equinoxes; they have specific dates. The others are more flexible.)(…I think I’ll shift Samhain so it’s right before the Mysteries of Wesir, too. That seems more appropriate.)

…This wasn’t meant to turn into an entry on when I should celebrate Lammas, but there you go. But having the Sabbats as close to the correct seasons as possible is important to me, so I don’t mind shifting around the minor Sabbats so they fit better with the rest of my calendar. I’d rather shift the odd day where I can than rejig the whole calendar that, for the most part, works out for me. It’s just those other little dates that don’t quite fit the seasons.

It’s really interesting to think about that too, of summer potentially shifting from December-Feburary to January-March. Autumn is more like April-June, Winter turns up in July-September, and Spring runs October-December. It’s shifted since I was a kid, and I’ve felt this was the case for several years now, that the seasons have shifted a month along. I’m in no position to speculate as to why this is happening, though I’m tempted to suggest it’s more rotation of the Earth and axis tilt than just down to climate change. I think it’s a complicated combination of both, as well as other factors, that have shifted the seasons along. Winter is certainly drier than I remember it being, but that’s part of the trend too.

In a post I made last month, I talked about which Gods I’m thinking of celebrating/honouring at each Sabbat, and I had Wesir and Aset down for Lammas. Wesir as God of the Grains, and Aset of the Green Earth. Not a traditional epithet of Aset, I am willing to acknowledge, but I’m pretty sure Aset’s done that thing where She’s introduced me to Wesir, and now He’s just become part of my festival calendar. I conceive of Aset here as the Aset who conceived Heru from the revived body of Wesir with Her magic. She makes the Green Earth fertile, and helps bring forth life. That’s how I look at it, and weirdly, of all the myths of this kind associated with the Wheel, this is the one I can relate to the most, and one I don’t run screaming from because it’s all heteronormative and weird. I don’t know why it’s different; maybe it’s because they’re my Gods, and not some nameless God and Goddess, and somehow, IDK, it makes sense.

I’ve also just had a thought that this also relates to Sobek as Tatanen, the first mound of land that came out of the Nun. It’s a figmentary thought, and not quite complete, but I’ve seen those images of Wesir-shaped boxes with grains growing in them, and in the context of how I see this Sabbat, I see Sobek giving life to Wesir, too, as well as Aset, and that this is an echo of what Djehuty told me, that Sobek is Amun is Ra is Ptah is Wesir. Perhaps Sobek and Wesir are sharing fertility aspects here. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure that out one day.

…The Green Earth bit could also be Sobek, too, now that I think about it. Connecting Him to both Wesir and Aset makes some semblance of sense in this context, though it is all UPG, I’ll remind you, and just my musings on how to connect my Gods up with the Sabbats in a meaningful way.

What’s also weird is that, looking back at that provisional Wheel, I’ve got Sobek, Heru-sa-Aset, Aset and Wesir all over that calendar. In some ways, I’m not even surprised by that, as They’ve become my main Gods. But it’s also leading to many different headaches as I try to figure out how it all works with my UPG. It doesn’t have to work out into a single narrative, that’s what polyvalent logic is for, but it does mean holding more than one story in my head.

But I think I’m veering off-topic now, so I might just finish here. I’ll ramble on about Litha next week, and Mabon the week after that. I’ve also got one W topic set aside for the Wheel of the Year, and I’ll hopefully have figured out my calendar enough to do a good detailed post on it all by then. And why I prefer a fixed over a wandering calendar, and not just because I suck at maths. XD

As far as religious jewellery goes, I’ve worn various pendants and necklaces over the years that hold some sort of religious significance. As a Kemetic pagan, I have gathered a number of ankhs, though I only wear one now. The others are used for other things. Other Kemetic symbols I have are Eyes, one of which is on my keys. It’s a protective amulet. I also wear a small thin feather that represents Ma’at, that sits next to the ankh I wear. They’re both silver.

Because I’ve been Kemetic for so long, I never bought a pentagram until last year. I had a small brass one that came with some sort of spell kit I bought several years ago, but that ended up as a charm sort of thing on my dissecting kit. I never wore it. But now I have a small silver pentagram that I wear on a long chain, so I can hide it under clothes if I need to. It’s just a bog standard silver pentagram, no trappings or other adornments. I like the simplicity of it, though it belies the complex meaning it holds for me.

The only other religious jewellery I wear these days is a St Michael pendant an old friend sent me some years ago. It’s not something I’d have bought myself; I’d have preferred Mary if I was picking one for myself. I pretty much just wear it for her, though if anyone sees me wearing it and, without the pentagram, assumes I’m Christian without actually asking me, I’m not going to dissuade them. Not my problem. If they ask, I’ll probably enlighten them, but I won’t bother most of the time.

Statuary jewellery refers to the ever-growing collection of necklaces and other things I use to adorn my statues. It’s a small reflection of how statues were treated back in ancient times, where they were dressed and adorned daily and offered food and incense. So I have small pendants and things that They’ve claimed, or have been offered to Them, that I can dress Them in.

When I was first starting out, I made all sorts of necklaces for all the Gods I was working with at the time. They weren’t very good, but I picked out little pendants and symbols that I could use and strung them together on coloured string with some beads. They were my first attempts at devotional jewellery, and while they weren’t very good, I never sensed anyone objected.

But I’ve moved on from those now. A while back, I decided I needed to revamp the statuary jewellery I had, and decided to get some better things for Them. So I put the old stuff away, and started collecting new things.

Sobek has the most, by a long stretch. Who’d have thought a crocodile would love shiny green things? So I have a lot of those. I also have a few shark teeth that He seems quite happy to have. They’re not croc ones, though I do have a crocodile skin/teeth wristband that I wear for Him though. Teeth pointing towards my hands to show I’m ready to strike.

Aset is very picky about Hers though. She wants decent quality stuff, so I have to save up to get Her anything good. Mostly, She has the best necklaces I have, the iron ore stuff (I think?) that adorns the statue of Her suckling Heru. It was part of a set I was given some years back, the bracelet of which was claimed by Bast almost as soon as I unwrapped it.

I also have a spear/arrow head on a leather cord that Yinepu-Wepwawet wears. I wear it when I need Their energies with me. My Yinepu statue also wears a long black cape, too. He’s the only one with actual ritual clothing. It was a blanket I made for one of my Grand Champions horses, but He nicked it and won’t give it back. The only way it could look more Reaperish is if it had a hood.

I’ve also got some other jewellery and necklaces I don’t use though. They were given to me over the years and no one’s claimed them, so they just sit in my nanna’s jewellery cabinet, which I inherited after her death. Maybe one day I’ll do something with them.

This is part of me figuring out how to structure my path, too. Knowing what my yearly calendar will be like, I can go down to a seasonal and then a monthly level, and then figure out what to do each day. It’s harder to build from the day to the year, so I do it the other way around. Knowing who I want to honour on each of the Sabbats makes it easier to pin down the rest of my yearly festival calendar.

My Wheel (so far):

1. Yule/Winter Solstice: Sobek and Harpocrates, as the new-born Sun, and Hestia.
2. Imbolc: Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea. (Isis, Hekate, Yemaya, Mary, and maybe Kwan Yin too) (I may alternate with these, but that’s the general theme, as a festival of lights honouring any/all of these Goddesses, for lack of a better word to use.) I still see this as a time of initiation, too, to begin things and do rededications and whatnot.
3. Ostara/Spring Equinox: Wesir-Ra, the light/dark death/life duality, and Hestia.
4. Beltaine: The Horned Goddess, self-love and acceptance (all the genders!), pleasure, and joy. Kind of taking it beyond the ‘heteronormative fertility’ aspect and making it more personal and inclusive. The love and joy and acceptance of all genders and all kinds of bodies and the pleasure we take in them and from them. Not necessarily sexual, but that is an aspect of it. That’s how I’m beginning to make Beltaine work for me.
5. Litha/Summer Solstice: Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset, as the Sun at its Peak, Aset, and Hestia.
6. Lammas: Wesir God of the Grains, and Aset of the Green Earth, the harvest. Taking stock of what you’ve achieved and beginning to prepare for winter.
7. Mabon/Autumn Equinox: Wesir-Ra, the light/dark death/life duality, and Hestia.
8. Samhain: Hekate and the Ancestors. Beginning that descent into the ‘dark’ time between Samhain and Yule.

The Solstices and Equinoxes are kind of the main thing, and I kind of like the split, with Sobek and Heru-sa at the Solstices, and Wesir-Ra at the Equinoxes. Not that I need an excuse to honour Wesir-Ra. That God fascinates me so much. I think He’d work well as an Equinox God. Also, Hestia at each of the Solstices and Equinoxes to reinforce the Household stuff, now that we’ll have a proper Hearth for Her. (We’re in the middle of getting a proper fireplace built, with a proper mantle and everything. I swear, the house already feels warmer even when the gas heater isn’t on. But it has fake logs and real flames and it’s so nice to watch. I think Hestia finally approves because I am getting Nudges about a Shrine. I may have to dedicate that hearth to Her over the weekend, or at least light it and invite Her in, even if it’s incomplete.)

What I like about it is the split between the universal/seasonal/cosmic side of the Solstices and Equinoxes, and the more personal focus of the cross quarter days. I might try to keep that focus in my queer Wheel in one form or another. Hmm. /ponders. It makes for a good split between work for the world and your own personal growth, I think. I like that split anyway, even if no one else does.

For a while now, I’ve always conceived of the time between Samhain and Yule as a time of introspection and ‘hibernation’. It’s the sort of time where you can rest and prepare for Yule and the new year, but I wouldn’t start anything during that time, or do any magic. It’s a black period, like a descent into the Underworld, a forced period of rest and contemplation where you can do some srs inner work that might not be so easy to do at other times of the year. IDK if anyone else conceives of that time period in the same way I do, but that’s how I see it. I actually like that time. Sometimes you need the time to just concentrate on inner work. (It’s also the time where the Mysteries of Wesir falls in my rejigged fixed seasonally-appropriate perpetual calendar. Which works for me better than if it was the other way around. Much more appropriate time for it to be marked, at least for me.)

I’ve been trying, for a while now, to figure out which POV I should approach this path from, Roman, Greek, or Egyptian. But the more I looked into Greek and Roman recon stuff, and how they see the world, it just didn’t jive with my own beliefs at all. It wasn’t how I saw things. I think, through and though, that I’ll always be Kemetic first. I’m happy that I can be Kemetic with Graeco-Roman influences instead of some other weird combination. That makes a lot of sense to me. Aset keeps reminding me that my soul is Egyptian above all else. I will always belong to Egyptian Gods first and foremost, even if I sometimes honour Their Graeo-Roman forms from time to time. Sobek, Heru-sa-Aset, and Aset will always be my primary Gods, and Their permanent shrine is the one I should tend to daily before everything else. Knowing that, it makes my life a hell of a lot easier. Because it’s easier to build a practice once I know where I’m meant to be coming from. And now that I know that, that I’m approaching this as a Kemetic with a range of Graeco-Roman influences, I can begin to piece it all together. I’ve got the foundations to build on now. It helps me figure out how to structure my festival calendar.

I was going to ramble on a bit more about my calendar and why I’ve decided on a fixed permanent sort of calendar rather than a wandering one, but I might save that for another post. It requires more explanation than I have the energy for right now. So I’ll save that for later.

Feel free to use them yourself, or mod them up to suit your own needs.

I’ve currently got adorations for Sobek, Heru-sa-Aset, Harpocrates and Suchos, Amun, Nit, and Temu.

I also have a version tied to one of my prayer bead sets, which I’ll share below. I wrote this first, actually, and from there, expanded what I had into individual adorations for the Gods. The concept came to me as I lay in bed with them the day after I’d made them, meditating on each bead to see what story they wanted to tell me. This is what they told me.

A string of prayer beads for Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset, and also for Nit-Tem-Amun. The red beads are for Sobek/Nit, the blue beads are for Tem, and the cream beads are for Amun/Heru-sa-Aset.

Adorations for the Creators
by Sobekemiti

The First Five Beads:
1. Hail to You, Sobek, The First To Exist
2. Hail to You, Temu, The Complete One
3. Hail to You, Amun, The Hidden One
4. Hail to You, Nit, The Great He-She
5. Hail to You, Heru-sa-Aset, The First-born Sun

First Set of Red Beads – Heru-sa-Aset/Nit:
1. I adore You, Nit, Great Creatrix
2. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Who Avenges His father
3. I adore You, Nit, Mother and Father of Sobek
4. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, the Strong One
5. I adore You, Nit, the Great Weaver
6. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Second Born Twin
7. I adore You, Nit, Who Holds The Arrows of Time
8. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Who Sits on the Lotus
9. I adore You, Nit, Oracle of Fate

First Black Bead:
Before Creation, there was darkness, and nothingness. All that existed was nothing, the waters of Nun still and silent. Until the Self-Created One comes into being from Nothing at all.

The First Set of Blue Beads – Sobek/Temu:
1. I adore You, Temu, the Cosmic Lotus
2. I adore You, Sobek, First of the Twins
3. I adore You, Temu, The Unified One
4. I adore You, Sobek, Great Cosmic Creator
5. I adore You, Temu, the Great He-She
6. I adore You, Sobek, Star of the Universe
7. I adore You, Temu, The First That Existed
8. I adore You, Sobek, Ptahtanen, the First Land
9. I adore You, Temu, Mirror of the First Creation

First Gold Bead:
The Sun is born from the Cosmic Egg. From the darkness, the light. The Universe Explodes from the darkness into a shower of light as the new sun’s weak rays first shine across the Universe.

White Set of Beads – Amun/Harpocrates/Suchos:
1. I adore You, Amun, The Hidden One
2. I adore You, Harpocrates, the Still Silence
3. I adore You, Suchos, Great Crocodile
4. I adore You, Amun, Whose Form is Unknown
5. I adore You, Harpocrates, Child of Isis
6. I adore You, Suchos, who Heals the Land
7. I adore You, Amun, Dark Side of the Sun
8. I adore You, Harpocrates, Who Stands on the Back of Suchos
9. I adore You, Suchos, Who Carries the Falcon

Second Gold Bead:
Heru-sa-Aset, Bright Star of His Mother Aset, comes to claim the throne. He avenges His father and the Sun’s bright light shines forth.

Second Set of Blue Beads: – Sobek/Temu:
1. I adore You, Sobek, Lord of the Nile
2. I adore You, Temu, Who Cannot Be Grasped
3. I adore You, Sobek, Who Cared for the Hidden Heru
4. I adore You, Temu, Who Exists And Is Yet Unknown
5. I adore You, Sobek, the Fertile One
6. I adore You, Temu, Who Is Nothing
7. I adore You, Sobek, Who Rescued the Sons of Heru
8. I adore You, Temu, Who Is Everything
9. I adore You, Sobek, Protector of the Throne

Second Black Bead:
Wesir dies and is reborn, light from darkness, darkness from light. The Duat is the place where the Sun Does Not Shine, and Wesir reigns as the Dark Side of Ra, the Hidden Sun King who takes care of the Unseen World.

Second Set of Red Beads – Heru-sa-Aset/Nit:
1. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Who Sits on the Throne
2. I adore You, Nit, Weaver of the Fates
3. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Song of Wesir
4. I adore You, Nit, Who Exists Between
5. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, the Great King
6. I adore You, Nit, One and Complete
7. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Who Faced Set
8. I adore You, Nit, the Fiery One
9. I adore You, Heru-sa-Aset, Champion of the Two Lands

Final Silver Bead:
An offering that the King gives to Wesir, the Lord of Busiris, the Great God, the Lord of Abydos, that He may give a voice-offering of bread, beer, oxen, birds, alabaster, clothing, and every good and pure thing upon which a God lives for the kau of the ancestors, known and unknown, that they may be justified.

A string of prayer beads for Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset, and also for Nit-Tem-Amun. The red beads are for Sobek/Nit, the blue beads are for Tem, and the cream beads are for Amun/Heru-sa-Aset.

I redid my old prayer beads last night and rejigged them into something more fitting to my path. The one above was meant to be just for Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset as the Celestial Twins (hence the crocodile and Eye pendants), but I also got nudged that they also belong to Nit-Tem-Amun, too  (Don’t worry, there’ll be a Pagan Blog Project post on Them in due course). There’s no particular set of prayers for it, though. I was more considering using them for adorations, or for meditation/quiet shrine time.

I actually made two more sets, one for Aset/Isis, and another for the Horned Goddess. I want to make another set for Hekate too, but I need some more red and black beads. All three sets are arranged in groups of nine and then a spacer bead.

A string of prayer beads for Aset/Isis. It's made of Her colours, moreso than having beads of any particular meaning.

This set is for Aset/Isis. This is definitely a set more to use for adorations and chants. There’s no particular order to the colours, apart from the fact that they’re Her colours. It feels really nice to hold, and the beads are small enough to feel like you’re not holding some large string of beads.I have half a mind to chant Aset-Nut/Isis-Hekate on the nine, and say prayers on the four spacers. But IDK.

A string of prayer beads for the Horned Goddess. The green is for the forest, the red for the Beltaine fire, and the cream/white for the totality of gender that She represents.

This is the last set I made for the Horned Goddess. The leaf pendant is from the Valley of the Giants down near Denmark in Western Australia, which is totally my favourite forest ever. <3  I may create a set of prayers for these beads, but at the moment, it’s just a thing for Her. Also, She did get Her shrine out of me, so now I have to figure out what to use to represent Her. I’m considering some sort of stag or deer, but IDK yet. Perhaps some antlers, but I’m more inclined to make them and not use real ones. I also have half a mind to make some smaller Fimo/polyclay antlers and a clitdick to wear for Beltaine. I’m not sure where most of this is going, but I have a feeling it’s going to come together in time for Beltaine once that comes around in Spring. (For reference, I’m in Australia. That’s not til late October.)

I’ve been a Kemetic practitioner for most of my Pagan life. Isis was the first Goddess I ever had any experience with, before Djehuty and Sobek came along. I learnt Egyptian religion and theology, I learnt the ritual style, the language, and cosmogony. I was born of Kemetic Gods; my heart and soul belong to Them above all others. I am Egyptian first.

But at the same time, I have Aset/Isis drawing me to Rome, and Hekate, Apollo and the Titan Muses drawing me to Greece. It’s like my Kemetic practice won’t be complete unless I somehow fuse all three together into one coherent practice. I’m still not entirely sure how to do that, but slowly, we’re getting there.

I feel a bit strange talking about it, too, because it’s not something I’ve come across, apart from Neos Alexandria, a Graeco-Kemetic group. For the most part, reconstructionist groups tend to stick to a single cultural group. And I’m sure there may be reconstructionists who might say I’m just being ‘eclectic’ and not a proper reconstructionist in wanting to fuse these three paths into a single cohesive path. But I’m not claiming to be a pure reconstructionist. Even though there was some semblance of fusion that did go on between the three religions, I’m not really looking to reconstruct that. This is partly because I’m coming at this from a Kemetic perspective, not a Roman or Greek perspective. I don’t adhere to the Roman view that other Gods are just avatars/different forms of Roman Gods.

That’s just one of the issues I’m facing. I’m having to juggle these different worldviews and find some way of dealing with it while still not just disrespecting one in favour of another. I want to be respectful to these traditions, to respect the Roman and Greek religions in trying to fuse these things together. So I’m refocussing my research on that time period when the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians intermingled and syncretic forms of religious worship were around. I don’t necessarily want to recreate that, because I doubt that’ll happen, but I want to take inspiration from that time period for my own personal worship and practice.

I know I’ll never find any one particular community that will be open enough to worship like I do, so I have to find a solitary way of doing things. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean either finding solitary rites that already exist or figuring out a way to rewrite group rites as solitary rites, so I can do them myself. But I’m nowhere near being able to do that yet. I have a lot of research to do before I would feel comfortable writing any rites.

I’m not well-versed in Roman and Greek religions, and only know of the reconstructionist groups in a vague sort of way. I’m not particularly interested in Nova Roman or any of the Hellenismos groups, but at the same time, they’re probably not bad places to look for inspiration, so I’m planning to look at them too, when I have time, to see how they do things and what I could use from them to get a better idea of how their religions work. I need that sort of thing in order to do justice to the Roman and Greek paths that are being asked of me.

I also need to brush up on my Latin and Greek. The Titan Muses would like me to learn Greek so I can write hymns for Them, at the very least, and also so I can look at Greek names and not stumble aimlessly across all those syllables. I want to be able to pronounce things properly. I also need to learn all the different religious terminology. I know how the Kemetic religion works (insomuch as there is a single thing called Kemetic religion), and I know what the words mean, I know how to approach the Gods and what words to say when offering to Them, and I know the calendar and festivals. But I don’t really know any of that about the Roman and Greek religions, so I have to learn about two new cultures and languages and maybe then I might have a better idea of where to go with syncretising them.

I know Isis wishes me to implement the Roman household rituals, with a Lares shrine and probably some sort of hearth shrine too. I’m not sure how much of the Greek religion will get implemented, but I don’t know enough to say anything is in or out yet, so we’ll see what happens with that. That’s really as far as I’ve got, along with the new moon and full moon rites for Hekate. I know I’m working primarily with Her for the next year, but it feels appropriate to continue to honour Her after that time. Apart from Kemetic-ish morning rites to Aset, Sobek, and Heru-sa-Aset, that’s all I’ve got so far. It’s very much a work-in-progress as I become more familiar with the Greek and Roman religions and begin to piece all this together. I’ll probably post any insights I have here as I go along, because if anything else, I want this site to also serve as a Book of Shadows, insomuch as it has a decent picture of my path, and that includes things like this.

She is some sort of transgendered Goddess, some sort of strange forest Goddess who seems to embrace all sorts of forms of Femininity, not just those who have been born female. (I suspect She may be a bit more queer than just female, but I have nothing to support this at the moment.) I find Her incredibly intriguing, and I don’t know if She’s a totally new Goddess, or an older Goddess in disguise. But She keeps on hanging around on the fringes of my mind, and I have no idea what She might want. That She came to me in connection with Beltaine, the one Sabbat I find very hard to get my head around as a genderqueer pagan, I don’t think is a coincidence.

I am not sure why I am talking about Her now. I had meant to talk about other things. This entry was going to be about other things, but She looms so much in my mind now that it is impossible to talk about anything else. Perhaps it is the fallout from PantheaCon that has made me think about actual transgendered Deities, with scars and transgendered bodies. Certainly the concept of transgendered Gods with transgendered bodies has come up in some of the PantheaCon discussions, and I admit I was rather struck by the idea. It had not quite occurred to me that queer Gods didn’t have to just be old Gods; they could be new Gods with transgendered bodies, the way we recognise them. With scars and everything else that entails.

I had intended for this post to reflect on gender, queerness and the Gods, in the sense of how gender in any way reflects on the Divine. But I’m not sure now. Certainly, I think the Gods use forms that are familiar to us, that we will recognise, if They are seeking to get our attention. The Titan Muses did that with me, appearing in forms I was more familiar with so I would recognise Them. But this has the added dimension of not actually being able to find any historical images of the Three at all, so I have no face for Them. Any image I use for the three Muses now will have to be contemporary because I have nothing else.

But I don’t really see the Muses as being particularly corporeal, nor even particularly gendered either. I am not sure this isn’t just my thing where Gods will tend to show more genderqueerness with me than with others, to show me a face I will more likely recognise and relate to. My genderqueerness does reflect how I see things, even down to the creation of the Universe, so in some ways, I’m not surprised that I keep seeing this side of the Gods.

But in some ways, I’m not even surprised They can do this. I’ve never particularly thought Gods had very strict genders anyway. While I certainly believe that Creator Gods in particular are allgendered/agendered/other-gendered, which my own personal creation myth reflects, with these Gods made up of all the diversity in the Universe, perhaps other Gods have some of this quality to Them too, even if They aren’t strictly Creator Gods.

I mean, Aset is not exactly known as a Creator Deity, but even She has this side to Her, though I rarely get to see it. She is a shapeshifter. I sometimes suspect I see Her shapeshifting in the faces of all the Goddesses She introduces me to. She has referred to Them as different faces of Her, all different aspects of Aset. But even though I would never refer to Her as anything other than Female, there are times when this is such an inadequate description I can’t use the term at all. She goes beyond it, far beyond it. I think it’s Her shapeshifting that gives Her this quality. She can become anything She wants/needs to be.

I’ve always found Djehuty interesting in this regard, too. It would feel wrong to use anything other than male pronouns for Him, but He has a very androgynous energy about Him. He never feels … male. Or even masculine, insomuch as those terms can be used to describe Gods without it being weird. But what’s even weirder is that I’m not the only one who experiences Him this way, which makes me think it’s more a part of His nature than just a face He shows me. He’s a Creator God, but I see Him as more or less asexual. Insomuch as that sort of language can be applied to a God. He has a very gentle and quiet sort of masculinity.

Sobek, too, has this genderqueerness about Him. He is a Creator God, but He also has a nurturing side as well as a protective side. They are … kind of gendered? But not explicitly. Just – it’s more based on the sort of energy each side has. It’s more sensation than a strict gender.

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a crocodile thing, but I really do love everything about saltwater crocs. They care for their young and tend the nests. They carry their babies in their mouths to take them to the water. Fuck it, they’re the only reptiles with a true four-chambered heart. It’s that caring side that I see in Sobek, too. I often feel like His fearsome reputation is misplaced because He is just so caring and gentle. Protective, yes. Has a fierce temper, yes. But Sobek tended to the young Heru-sa-Aset in the marshes. He sang Him lullabies. And He’s my Father. He cares for me as He cared for Heru. He’s the most beautiful God I’ve ever had the honour to meet. (But I’ll save this for later; then you will get a 5k word tl;dr post just about Sobek. )

I look at that and find there isn’t much point in trying to give gender to the Gods in any meaningful way. It is helpful to us to help us comprehend Them, but it’s not going to be a true picture. I sometimes think that every God is agendered/allgendered/other-gendered; it’s just that humanity is so unused to dealing with those sort of Gods that other gendered expressions are required so we might recognise Them when we see Them. They choose forms that we’re most likely to recognise, whether that lines up with traditional imagery or not.

It’s really interesting working with Gods that have no image, such as Amun, and the Titan Muses, to a certain extent. Amun is the Hidden One, and His form is unknowable. Apart from using male pronouns for Him, His gender is unimportant. But He is a Creator God, and I’ve always felt He embodied all genders anyway. He’s one of the only Gods who I would never buy an icon for either; His form is Hidden. What is the point of an image? Which image would you even choose anyway? An empty box would be more suitable for Him, I think.

And then I keep thinking back to this Horned Goddess and the idea of actually seeing transgendered bodies reflected in the Divine. And even if I’m more genderqueer than interested in changing my body, it’s weirdly comforting to have that image, to know the Gods can embrace someone like me and other gender diverse people. It doesn’t necessarily make the Gods any easier to comprehend, I’ll add, because I think it just  complicates it. There are more layers to contemplate.

But even I stumble. Even I let my gender baggage get in the way of interacting with Gods. Hethert and Aphrodite are big ones for me. I’ve never quite been able to connect to Them because They’re just too female for me, and I must admit to falling into the ‘love goddess’ frame and not really seeing Them for Who they really are. Even I struggle with that, to not put the Gods into boxes and experience Them as They present Themselves to me.

That said, I think I’m having more luck with Aphrodite than with Hethert. The more I read about Hir, the more I like Hir. I’ve sort of always had a feeling She had more to Hir than most people thought. But I hadn’t quite grokked it until now. I haven’t approached Hir yet, though, because I have nothing to approach Hir with. But I’m so new to working with Greek deities that it may take me a while to get there. I’m learning a whole new culture, and that’s taking some adjustment. New ways of seeing Gods, of doing rituals, writing hymns, there’s a lot that’s actually different to the Kemetic way I’m used to.

I don’t know if Hethert is the same though. It might take me a bit longer to get to Her. I have a niggling feeling there’s a reason I’m avoiding Her, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what it is. Perhaps I’ll find out if/when I ever decide I’m ready to approach Her.

But if I’m honest, Aset is pretty much the only Goddess I’ve ever had in my life. She’s introduced me to other Deities, sure, but She’s always come first. In some weird way, I think even Hekate is connected to Her, even though it was Sobek who fostered me off to Her. I think it’s through Isis, in the Aset-Nut/Isis-Hekate sort of way. /head asplodes.

But I digress. There are probably things I haven’t covered that I meant to cover. I’ve probably rambled on about things I probably didn’t need to go into. But my approach to blogging has always been take a topic and write and see where you end up at the end of it, and this seems to be where I’m at now, talking about Goddesses. But as WordPress informs me that this post is already approaching 1800 words, perhaps now is a good time to stop.

So, faith. I’m not sure I remember what my idea was when I added this to the list for this week. Faith is quite the intangible thing. You can’t measure it, not really. I’ve often thought that it’s something you just know when you ‘see’ it?  Feel it may be a better description, perhaps.

It’s strange to talk about my own faith, too. It’s intangible, and in some ways, incomprehensible. For me, it’s definitely something I just know I have. Like, I have an unshakeable faith in my magic. I never doubt it won’t work. I don’t know how or why I have developed such a faith in magic, but there you go. It does mean that every spell I’ve ever cast has worked, though, so I guess that’s a nice bonus.

I think that’s also part of faith. Not doubting. And not in the sense of never questioning your faith or beliefs either, but … Like. It’s a different thing. I’m not sure I’m articulating this well, but faith is tied up with trust. So in order to have the faith in magic that I have, I also trust in what I’m doing. I trust the magic will work.

I also have faith in my Gods. It’s one of those things that comes with working with Gods, I suppose. I trust that They have my best interests at heart, and that They’re not going to cause me mischief and strife in return for my faith in them. It’s about trust. It’s strange to talk about trusting imaginary things, in the sense that I can’t actually prove They exist just as no one can prove They don’t exist either. But that’s what faith is for. It’s trusting in spite of not having any ‘proof’ (in the sense that proof is meaningful with regards to religious belief).

Like, even if I’m not entirely sure where Sobek is leading me when He (and the rest of my Divine Family) set things in motion, I have to trust that He has His reasons. I usually don’t know what He has in store for me, or how all these seemingly unconnected things make sense. At the same time, I still never feel like I’m being led somewhere with no control or free will. Sobek’s guidance is much more akin to ‘Look at this shiny thing!’ and leaving it down to me as to what I do with it. I think that’s why He’s so patient. There’s never only one path with Him. Working with Sobek is like making your way through a Choose Your Own Adventure novel in that there are many ways to proceed, depending on the choices you make, and perhaps even more than one ending. I have a feeling Sobek adjusts things as we go along based on what I’m interested in, and what I’ve decided isn’t interesting enough to pursue. To trust Sobek that much, to be sure He’ll lead me somewhere worthwhile even though I don’t have a map, takes a lot of faith.

To use a computer game analogy, it’s like starting an Age of Empires game (whichever flavour you like best), and all you can see is your town centre, maybe a house, and a few villagers. Assuming you’re not the sort of person who starts with the map revealed and fog of war turned off, that’s pretty much your whole world until you explore further. You’re surrounded by inky blackness and you’re unsure exactly what’s out there, apart from a few coloured spots where the other players are.

You don’t know the terrain, you don’t know what’s out there, you don’t even know how strong your enemies are until you venture into their camps to see if they’re able to be epically pwned sooner rather than later. That’s kinda what I feel like when Sobek begins to lead me around the place. I don’t have any information to go on, nothing but blackness and a few landmarks.

But the more I explore, the more of the terrain I get to know. I find a path that leads one way, but might be ignorant of another path elsewhere that’s quicker. I might stumble across a dead end. Maybe even stumble into an enemy camp, being ambushed by a tower I hadn’t been aware of. But the more I explore, the more I can make sense of the world I’ve found myself in. The map begins to make sense, and I can see how useful my allies might be.

Which is not to suggest that the paths Sobek leads me on are particularly dangerous. They’re not, for the most part. But it’s that sense of discovery, of not being able to make sense of things until you’ve revealed a significant amount of the map and got further along the road. And like all Age of Empires games, there’s never only one way to proceed. I mean, I’m pretty consistent in the way I play, but there are other ways of playing the game that I don’t use. Different configurations of armies, different priorities with tech research or gathering resources, that sort of thing. It’s the same with Sobek and I. He never makes the same path twice.

I feel like I’ve come a bit far from the topic of faith here, but so much of it does revolve around my relationship with Sobek and the trust I have in Him that no matter how much I side-eye Him and wonder wtf He’s got in mind when He introduces me to whatever it is He wants me to look at this time.

And, like, it’s not even just spiritual things either. This is a God that has spent a good proportion of my life trying to get me into metal.  Sobek’s priorities, I don’t even.

But I still have faith. And maybe things won’t make sense for years to come, maybe they’ll never make sense, but I want to experience everything He throws at me because I know it’ll be worth it one way or another.

IDK. I could talk about the faith I have in all my other Gods, but then this would be another 5,000 word post and I think one of those is quite enough for one year. So perhaps I’ll leave this here as an illustration of the faith I have, and why Sobek is a bastard.

I deliberately use the term ‘confusion’; these periods of time for me are like the time between Samhain and Yule, a time of deep introspection before I come back into the world again reborn. I descend, and I come out again once things have cleared up. It’s not depression. It’s not – I wouldn’t even use the term ‘dark night of the soul’. It’s just… I get to the point where several paths collide, and I can’t move on til I’ve taken all those myriad pieces and paved a road out of it again.

This passage really describes my experience at the crossroads in a way I haven’t been able to describe before:
‘When I say I am at a crossroads in my magickal life, I do not mean that I am faced with a decision to make, which path to follow. I mean that my three main paths of magickal training, study and experience are now converging into one path. I can make no decision, as there is no decision to make.’- Soror Basilisk, The One Who Waits at the Crossroads, in Hekate: Her Sacred Fires, p 143.

This is what happens when I reach the crossroads. It’s a time to take stock of where I’ve been and to figure out how to bring all these experiences together and move on. I’ve never particularly thought of it in terms of alchemical transformation, but maybe that’s exactly what it is. Maybe I’ve been an alchemist without really being aware of it.

I find myself at the crossroads again after eleven years as a Pagan of varying flavours. Only this time, there is someone waiting for me. She is Hekate, and She is in charge of this pause at the crossroads.

So much has happened. Since I first contacted Her, since I left Kemetic Orthodoxy, since my path has started wamdering all over the place. (Well, wandering more than usual…)

I want to write so much. I want to write and write and put all these thoughts and experiences down on paper, on the screen, into words. But I find it impossible to talk about in any coherent form because most of it would not make sense to anyone else. It’s not secret; it’s not something I will never speak about. But it is too incomprehensible to talk about. It is as close to my understanding of what Mysteries are about.

I’m only just beginning to work out whyShe has come into my life at this point in time. She has said She has been with me ‘from the beginning’, though I don’t really understand what She is referring to. The beginning of what? Will I ever find out? I have no idea. But She is here now, and She has claimed me for this next year. I am Hers and Hers alone, for now.

She is a Goddess of liminal spaces, of those between and not-quite-there. Gateways and doors and passageways. In some ways, I really don’t find it strange She has claimed me. I am genderqueer myself; my gender is fluid and dynamic. It is not set. It is between, and outside of, and something else entirely. It is a liminal space, and She is Goddess of transformations. There is alchemy inside me; I am allgendered like the Creator Gods. Allgendered/othergendered/agendered/something else entirely. I am only just beginning to figure out what all that really means.

Perhaps this is why I was shown the World Tree when I first contacted Hekate; it is, as I understand it, a connection/symbol of Her as the Cosmic World Soul. She is up there with Amun, Tem, and Nit, up there with all the other Gods of the Cosmis.

But as dazzlingly chaotic and mindblowing as all that is, our connection is much closer too. This pause at the crossroads is beginning to illuminate things. I am beginning to Know Thyself. Wepwawet describing me as a pack animal. My own role as guide and companion, how I am something of a torchbearer for other people (and hadn’t really realised that until now). All these things that have not made any sense before are slowly coming together.

I think it is Hekate’s presence that is making this pause at the crossroads seem more significant than the previous ones. The paths I’ve been walking before have finally met. And, yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever be a pure recon, but that was never something I wanted anyway. But this seems like this will finally be the time where I forge my recon(ish) leanings and my witchcraft together into one practice. What form that will take yet I have no idea. I have not paused long enough to see the big picture yet.

I think now is the time to look into alchemy properly. Being at the crossroads now is a time of transformation for me, and I think I need to fully embrace the Alchemist inside me to properly forge the right foundations for this new path. Spiritual alchemy more than physical alchemy though. I find the idea of physical alchemy rather dull and uninteresting. I want to go deeper than that.

I see this as moving towards the Magician I feel I need to become. Heru-sa-Aset asked it of me, and so does Djehuty. Amun is interested too. With Aset and Hekate as both Great of Magic, I think it is time to stop resisting the path of the Magician and Witch and see where it is I end up.

There are things only Hekate can teach me, so says Sobek. But there is no decision to make though, not really. It is a time for reflection and introspection, to cast aside what is no longer needed and nurture that which is most useful. I am the Magician forging something new from where I’ve been before. Who else but Hekate could tutor me in this endeavour? Who else but the Lady Who Waits at the Crossroads?

…I hesitated in picking this topic for this week, because explaining my epic UPG to people is always a bit weird for me and I don’t normally do it. I haven’t really done it at all since it was revealed to me. But I think it’s time, so I’m going to run with it and see where I end up, with the caveat that this is pretty much only True for me, and I’m in no way claiming any of this has any solid historical basis whatsoever. It’s important to me in that it helps explain the relationship I have with Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset (and Aset, but we’ll get to that later). I doubt it would have any relevance to anyone else in that respect, so just consider it my weird little oddity.

I do plan for separate entries on Sobek and Heru, too, more scholarly ones I think, but for me, so much of how I relate to Them now is about Them as a couple/pair/twins so I feel I must talk about Them together as well as separately, so I hope you’ll excuse this … far, far longer than strictly necessary post in which I talk about how the whole Celestial Twin thing developed and how it’s changed my path entirely.

Bit of background. Okay, a lot of background. I had a relationship with Sobek long before I knew Heru-sa-Aset. I always liked crocodiles, even as a kid. Dinosaurs too, are still some of my favourite reptiles. So when I finally met Sobek amd realised He’d been around a lot longer than I’d expected, it sparked a wonderful relationship between us. He did, in His own way, reveal He was my Father.

I had no idea there was a Heru in my life though. I didn’t know He was there. The only sign I ever had was a meditation I did years ago in the bath, where I saw my ‘vision’ framed by outstretched brown wings. In getting to know Him later on, I do mostly experience Him in falcon form, His outstretched wings wrapping around my head protectively. (Aset does this with me too, interestingly enough.) That was the extent of my experience with Heru until Kemetic Orthodoxy came along.

I was a member of the Kemetic Orthodox faith until a few months ago (for semi-unrelated reasons, but that’s for another post; this one is long enough as it is). I found them in 2003, did their beginner’s class in mid-2005, and became a remetj. I wanted to wait to do my Rite of Parent Divination (RPD), rather than rush in right after beginner’s class like practically everyone else does. I wanted to make sure it was the right path for me. So in mid-2006, I had my RPD, where my Parent and Beloved Gods are revealed. I was divined with one Parent (Sobek) and four Beloveds (Heru-sa-Aset, Aset, Djehuty, and Wepwawet).

A few things about that particular divination. Hemet (AUS) said at the time that she hadn’t been sure if I was Sobek’s or Heru-sa’s and argued with the divination about it, but the answer was no, I was Sobek’s, but Heru-sa is just really close to me. So close, in fact, I have A LOT of trouble actually getting to know Heru-sa. I just. Every time I think I’m about to grasp onto something He slips away. He’s harder to get to know than Amun, and Amun’s the Hidden One! Yes, this frustrates me. A lot. Grr.

I did try, and have tried, over the past five years to get to know Heru-sa-Aset, but I just can’t seem to get anywhere with Him. I keep reading about Him and trying to find some way of connecting, but getting nowhere. He’s infuriatingly elusive for a God who’s supposed to be so close to me. So close I can’t see Him. This really doesn’t help.

I think the closest I got was walking to the shops a while ago and there was this warm breeze about that I could feel Heru in. I offered Him coffee once, too, which He seemed to like. The image of a falcon trying to drink from a coffee cup will always be an amusing image for me. But that’s about it. That’s the sum total of my experiences with Him.

But I tried not to let it worry me and focussed on Gods I could contact and get to know. It was easier that way. Other distractions. Other things to learn and experience. Heru-sa-Aset wasn’t a priority, particularly not if He was going to be so hard to connect with. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time to get to know Heru-sa-Aset, too. Stranger things have happened, that’s for sure.

And then began the epic Sobek and Heru-sa connection thing. I can’t remember exactly when Sobek and Heru-sa began insisting that Their icons must be next to each other at all times. I have been lax in keeping records of all my shrines over the past ten years. It was probably around 2007-2008 though.

To explain a little, I used to have my altar set up so that Sobek was on a pedestal, as He was my Father, and so He was higher and taller than my other icons. My Beloveds were in front of that pedestal. So, yes, it was a bit odd when Heru-sa moved to that pedestal, and it began to look like I had two Fathers, not one. And, indeed, I had noticed that my thinking had shifted to thinking that I had two Fathers, not one, and I had no idea why.

The weirdest experience I’ve had with that is the one time I first separated Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset as I was cleaning out my shrines and They pined for each other. Srsly. I will assure you I got Them back next to each other as soon as I could. I have never separated Them since that day. They belong together.

Now, to explain a little more, with the RPD, while people can obtain new Beloveds, no one gets new Parents. It’s not how the system works. (I’ll leave it to others to mull this over.) But it’s how the Kemetic Orthodox framework operates at any rate. Parents don’t change; They are with you during all your lifetimes. Beloveds are specific for a single lifetime and can change. The accepted wisdom appears to be that Parents create the (eternal) Ba, and Beloveds create the Ka, but iirc this is more an attempt at trying to explain it than Fact. I can’t remember Hemet (AUS) saying this is Actually True. Willing to be corrected though, if She has said otherwise.

At any rate, this is the logic on which this whole RPD thing is based. So of course I was a little wary of bringing any of this up with the Kemetic Orthodox people because you can’t gain a Parent. When posting shrine pictures, particularly while still Kemetic Orthodox, I’ve always made a point of saying I’m not dual-parented, you know, this is just how They want to be. Because of course my divination was not a secret; I did agree to share it with the House, after all, and I don’t regret doing that.

This whole twin thing all started back in September 2010. I was in the shower at the time and Djehuty called me to Senut, and to bring coffee and toast, and to do purifications after I’d showered as I actually hadn’t planned on doing Senut at that particular moment. So since it’s the first time I’ve been called to shrine, I agreed.

So I’ve been called to shrine by Djehuty, and I’m sitting there thinking about Sobek and Heru-sa and why They are together like that. I was shown an image of a statue They’d like, in which They are side by side, in human form with their respective animal heads and various headdresses, holding hands. The holding hands was emphasised. Cue me thinking, how the fuck am I ever going to get that made? :/ Because at the time I didn’t exactly have a lot of money to my name. Or a job, iirc. So I was a bit worried about that.

And then I did something I hadn’t actually thought to do before. I asked Them why They’re sitting next to each other like that. Why do You insist on being next to each other, as if I have two Fathers? I’m still not sure what I expected Them to tell me. I hadn’t expected much of an answer, either. But, nevertheless, the answer I got was ‘twins’. Definitely hadn’t expected that.

Now, from the research I’ve done about Sobek, I know there was a Sobek-Heru syncretised form that was a crocodile with a falcon’s head, the name of which I have completely forgotten, and I did ask if that was what They meant, but I got a distinct NO back about that. That was not the correct form. They are Sobek and Heru-sa, together but separate. This, to me, is closer to my understanding of an aspected Deity, but I would definitely hesitate to pronounce this as anything other than UPG, tbh. Aspected deities, as a concept, are two distinct sides of the same coin. Oddly, and you’ll forgive me for skipping ahead, but this is a very odd thing considering They are … making odd but logical connections with Amun and Ra. (Amun-Ra being syncretised, not aspected. …See explanations below, if you’ve got lost at this point. )

// Detour //
Quick primer on syncretised and aspected Kemetic Deities so I don’t confuse you. They can be hard to get your head around because I don’t think it really occurs in any other pantheons and may be specific to Kemetic Orthodoxy? But I may be wrong. Willing to be corrected though.

Syncretised: two (or three) Gods merging into another new Deity. E.g. Amun-Ra, Ptah-Sokar-Wesir. They have a distinct role and purpose, and they are built from separate Gods and exist as separate Gods. So Amun, Ra, and Amun-Ra, are three separate Gods. Amun-Ra isn’t two Gods in one form. It is a single new God.

Aspected: Two sides of the same coin is, I think, the  best way to describe it. Or, IDK, three sides of the same triangle, for Nit-Nebthet-Seshat, for example. (The three Ladies are aspected, aren’t they? I think They are.) Parts that make up a whole, but are still separate parts. So, unlike Amun-Ra, which is a single new entity, Sekhmet-Hethert is two Gods that in Their own way, reflect each other. In Kemetic Orthodoxy, there are a group of Gods who are considered aspected, in that They always appear linked together. Aset-Serqet, Sekhmet-Hethert, and Yinepu-Wepwawet are three of them.

Except I didn’t get Aset-Serqet, even though one comes with the other in Kemetic Orthodoxy. Aset has explicitly told me that Serqet isn’t there, that I am only talking to Aset, when I have tried to talk to Serqet. So. I don’t know what to make of that. /weird. /has broken my argument. /exceptions to the rule, etc.

I hope that’s clear enough. It’s what I understand of the concepts at any rate. If you want any more information, I can try to dig up some links for you.
//end detour //

So. Anyway. I’m thinking on this twins thing, when Heru-sa says Sobek is my Daddy. Which is the translation of my Shemsu name, Sobekemiti. Way. To. Make. A. Point. Had one of those whu-? moments. Mentions of a triad with Aset the Stellar Goddess (who may also have always been Aset-Nut and just not bothered to tell me or anyone else), Sobek as Creator, and Heru-sa as Sobek’s twin/son.

(I admit this is somewhat similar to Feri, and I can’t claim I didn’t take any inspiration from Feri when I did read into it a year or two ago in looking up information on Divine Twins. But I don’t think I necessarily adopted it, as discovered another piece of the puzzle. Found a new way of looking at it, so to speak, though Feri is definitely not the path for me.)

Anyway, I’m sitting there confused, and I’m all, since when is Sobek your dad? And I get no answer. I mean, of all the child Gods in the Kemetic pantheon, Heru-sa’s Father is not really under dispute anywhere in the mythology. He’s Wesir’s son. He’s always Wesir’s son. Not Sobek’s. So I’m all, wtf. (In retrospect, I think, perhaps, that maybe Aset was making a point that Heru-sa’s name technically only says he is the son of Aset. Heru-sa-Aset means Heru son of Aset. No mention of Wesir. So. Read into that what you will.)

So anyway, I left shrine that day thoroughly confused. Went back the next day. Asked for clarification about ‘twin’, but was told it was the only word that could be used to describe Their relationship; ‘Other words are inadequate’, or so I was told by Sobek. I got the sense Sobek was speaking for both Him and Heru-sa, and that almost every time I went to talk to Heru-sa, He handed me back to Sobek. In some ways, I’m not particularly surprised. I am much closer to Sobek, I’m the first to admit that, so that Sobek would tell me these things rather than a God I don’t know isn’t surprising to me.

In doing some meditation on it later that evening, I was drawn to Castor and Pollux, two stars of Gemini, and twin Gods from the Graeco-Roman pantheons. My natal chart has me as Gemini rising. Something told me this might not actually be much of a coincidence, but I still haven’t particularly got an answer to that yet. I don’t know if there is an answer.

I went back to shrine the day after that and They clarified ‘twins’ into ‘The Celestial Twins’, and I am a child of both of Them, just as Heru-sa is Sobek’s son. And His twin. At the same time. This has had me reading a different set of interpretations about my Shemsu name than I had expected as I change the reference point from me to Heru-sa. /weird. /very weird.

There is an odd implication there of me as Heru-sa-Aset, that there is some sort of … difference in relationship/status/IDEK what between Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset. Sobek is higher. Heru-sa-Aset is subordinate. If that is even the right description. I’m still trying to articulate my feelings on this and I’m not sure I’m doing the right job of it. Because that was definitely one of the things I got out of that too. With Heru-sa-Aset being so close to me, I’m in some ways not at all surprised by this. That I am Him and He is me and we are all together. I’m not getting a sense that this is an incorrect interpretation, but I don’t really know of it’s significance either, so I can’t really say any more than this.

Amun was actually with me in shrine that day too, sitting to my left, and even He was a little surprised by Their emergence as twin stars, with Sobek as Creator, and Heru-sa as His twin/son. Two bright stars in the sky. That’s … kind of how I figured this was not just me making things up. I couldn’t make up anything this bizarre.

In some ways, there is some vague historical basis for Sobek as a Creator. In a manner of speaking. He is present in one myth where He rescues the four sons of Heru in His mouth and takes Them to land. In another, He is the first mound of land, Tatanen, that emerges from the waters of Nun. (If you’ve ever seen a crocodile come out of the water, this makes so much sense I can’t even.)

I haven’t got any references nearby at the moment, but I do recall somewhere where Sobek was seen as Creator. It might’ve been at His cult centre, but I can’t remember where. Certainly, the twin Temple for Sobek and Heru-wer (Heru the Elder) in Kom Ombo was unusual. So this at least establishes some sort of connection between Sobek and Heru. Just not my Heru. (Note to self: do some research into that Temple again. It’s been too long.) But at any rate, there are links in with Creation myths, which is enough for me.

And then there was nothing more I was told about Their connection. Just the Celestial Twins, and that I can’t have one without the other. They were, and are, inseparable. They come together. Because this is so much a form unique to me, I will not lay claims to any kind of historical basis, or that this is some sort of One True Form and all others are fake. It’s definitely something only for ME and no one else. This form is somehow significant for me and me alone. That’s all I can claim. Why They have choen to appear to me in this form, IDK. I hope one day I figure that out.

As I let this new information settle in, I also thought a lot about how this might affect me and being Kemetic Orthodox. There was a growing desire in me to figure out Their relationship, but if They would insist I was the child of both of Them, could I really still be Kemetic Orthodox? You don’t gain parents. You just don’t. That’s now how their system works. I did email Hemet(AUS) about it all, but there wasn’t much she could help me with. I don’t blame her for that. There’s not a lot anyone can do if I’m being told UPG that really only means something to me except go with it and see what happens.

I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the fact I could not state the relationship that had been revealed to me, at least amongst Kemetic Orthodox kin, while I was still a Shemsu. I didn’t think it was fair to anyone, and I felt that to state that from a Kemetic Orthodox point of view would make everyone look bad, and I didn’t want to do that. I would be claiming something against how I’d been divined while still a Shemsu, and I just. I didn’t want to do that.

I can’t exactly remember when it was, but sometime last year, in pondering this connection, I was told by Djehuty that Sobek is Amun is Ra. Now, for those not familiar with Kemetic gods, They sometimes bear titles/epithets of the form X in the name of Y. So this is referencing Sobek (acting as Creator) in the name of Amun in the name of Ra.

This in and of itself is pretty damn profound. But it gets better! Djehuty continued it so it said Sobek is Amun is Ra is Ptah is Wesir!

…Just think about all that for a moment. Djehuty is connecting all these Gods together  (and only those Gods), and in a roundabout way, justifying Heru-sa calling Sobek is Dad. Because Sobek is Amun is Ra is Ptah is Wesir.

…If you’re thinking that my brain broke trying to figure that shit out, you’d be right!

(Also, I have given no thought to Djehuty’s role in all this. But I think I probably should. He seems to keep popping up to tell me things/break my brain/etc.)

I think it was also around this time, or maybe a bit later, that Hemet (AUS) announced the reorganisation of the Kemetic Orthodox faith, asking us to really properly consider our place in the House and whether we wanted to stay or leave. While it was an annoucement that did cause a lot of friction, and yes, some people did leave, I still don’t blame Hemet (AUS) for doing it either. I understood her reasons for doing it, even if I didn’t agree with some of them.

In my head, I took a long time to decide what I wanted to do. But actually, I didn’t. I think I always had a sense that I would be leaving at that point, that I needed to leave. The delay was really about figuring out what, exactly, to write to Hemet (AUS). Because I didn’t really know, just that there were Things I needed to do that needed to be done away from the House. I suppose the reorganisation was the catalyst I needed to make a decision one way or another. Otherwise I might still be a Shemsu and still being a bit lost.

What I decided to say was basically that I needed to figure out Sobek and Heru-sa’s relationship – to me and to each other, and I needed a clean break, to get away from the Parent/Beloved framework and really delve into what this twin thing really means to me. I needed to see this from an outside perspective, and not worry about whether my interpretations were in line enough with Kemetic Orthodoxy or not.  I wanted to get away from sorting Gods into Parent, Beloved, Gods Who Like To Hang Around, and Others, and just experience Them as They are, without human labels or categories. I wanted to be able to approach my Gods without this framework hanging in the back of my mind and see things for what They really are.

Particularly as Aset has always asked me to refer to Her as my Mother for almost as long as I’ve had a relationship with Her, and that goes way back to 2001, before I’d ever heard of Kemetic Orthodoxy. No other word feels correct for Her, and She will not let me call Her anything else. But because She was never divined in a Kemetic Orthodox context as a Parent, I’ve always felt strange calling Her that in public Kemetic spaces in talking about our relationship. I feel a bit better doing that as an independent eclectic pagan, as I don’t feel like anyone might judge me for claiming a lineup that isn’t true. /paranoid about annoying my Kemetic Orthodox friends.

Perhaps it more my attitude to the RPD that is different from everyone else’s. Or maybe it’s just my path. But for me, it was never something that was going to stay static. The RPD is information. What you do with it after that, which relationships you cultivate and where they go after that, is up to you. So I’ve never felt like the RPD should *pin me down* in that sense, that these labels are fixed and permanent. But my Gods are always leading me down interesting pathways, so maybe I never expected them to be permanent. Maybe they were always going to change once it was time for me to go somewhere else.

I can’t speak for all Shemsu either, but I never considered my Shemsu vows were made to anyOne other than my Gods and my Gods alone. There are moments where I still consider myself a Shemsu in spirit. But IDK. Maybe that lack of connection to the House was a sign I was never meant to stay forever.

But I also know that I would not be where I am now if I hadn’t undergone RPD and been a Shemsu for five years. It was something I needed to undergo, I needed that information, in order to be where I am now. So in that sense, I do not consider it a waste, as my relationships with those Gods changes from how they were initially divined. I would not have known about Heru-sa-Aset if I hadn’t had my RPD. Maybe I would never have figured out He was there because of how close He is.

My path has always been very eclectic. I am a spiritual wanderer. I have never really tried to hide this. It’s pretty much a combination of fostering and ‘I dunno man, I didn’t do it’. I go where I’m led, wherever that turns out to be. I trust my Gods. They seem to know what I need, so I don’t see much point in fighting Them over it. And yet, there is always choice. I never feel like I have no control over any of this. But They still have a guiding hand every now and then.

Djehuty has summed it up thus: wisdom can be found anywhere if you take the time to look. This is why I don’t dismiss any spiritual experiences as not useful or a waste of time. Even if I don’t follow that path, even if I never revisit it again, or even if I stay for five years, everything, every spiritual experience, teaches me something that, even if I don’t understand it now, I may discover something important about it later on. Everything builds on what went before.

Mine is definitely the slow way, too. Things are not generally revealed in months, but years. Sobek is patient though. He will wait for me to make my own way to where it is He wishes me to be. I feel that’s why this first part of my path has taken TEN YEARS to come to fruition. Like I said, Crocman is patient. He can wait.

So, at the end of all this, and I apologise for how fucking long this thing has become, I can sum my relationships with the Gods up in this way:
- I am a Child of Sobek&Heru-sa-Aset;
They insist it is written this way so that I do not forget each of Them. Both are important. They have said I am a child of both of Them, so I am willing to acknowledge this. They prefer ‘child’ over anything gendered, and so do I, tbh.

They are the Two Guardians of Aset, another piece of UPG they’ve given me over the past two days. ‘Sobek protects the throne (Aset), and is the strength of the Nisut (Heru-sa-Aset)’, that’s what I was told. That, with Heru-sa-Aset protecting His mother, we have two guardians.

This is how Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset found a place on Aset’s shrine, flanking the box Her statue sits in. They are Her guardians. And now I have a triad. Bwee. XD /not quite what I was after when I started on this path but oh well.

- I am a Daughter of Aset;
Aset has always been important to me, and She now has a permanent shrine set up for Her and all the myriad Goddesses She introduces me to. She says She is showing me all Her different faces. Why She refers to me as Her daughter, I’ll never know, but She emphasises my feminine side. I can’t really complain. It works.

I can’t say She necessarily ‘rules’ my witchcraft practice either, but She does, in Her own way. My brand of witchcraft is eclectic; it doesn’t really ascribe to any tradition or type. It is what I make it.

She’s brought me back to the Fellowship of Isis, too. When I thought about it, when I thought about what I wanted in a religious community, my answer was fellowship. It’s always been fellowship. I’m not looking for a religion. I’m looking for people to talk to and share ideas with. So I’ve joined FOI (again). What I do after that, IDK. But that’s where I’m meant to be for the foreseeable future.

- I am a Beloved of Djehuty, Wepwawet and Ganesha;
Deep in my heart, I am convinced the three of Them are Up To Something. But I doubt I will have any idea what it is until it’s all over. They work together, that’s all I know.

I see connections between all three Gods, to be honest. There are threads of connections, even though They have different energies. I connect Wepwawet and Ganesha because Wepwa Opens The Way and Ganesha removes obstacles. They work together in that way, and They seem happy for me to call upon Them in this way for this reason.

And Djehuty is along for the ride, for whatever reason. At least I am comforted that I’m not the only one who has experienced Ganesha and Djehuty hanging out together. They seem to be quite good friends, Gods from different cultures who genuinely seem to like each other’s company.

Wepwawet has also been nudging me about getting a proper statue of Him. I’ve been using Yinepu’s to date, because at the time, it didn’t matter because They were both in there. But not now. Not anymore. I need something for Wepwawet. Probably two Wepwawets, since I’m pretty sure they’re going to have to go with my two Djehuty/Ganesha shrines.

I don’t even know why Ganesha is there. But He’s important to me, and to Djehuty. The two of Them have been hanging out together for years, so it seems odd to exclude Ganesha.

- I am a Companion of Amun and the Mousai Titanides;
Amun was the one who wanted us to be companions first; that was the word He used. I think He just wants to be friends, and I’m fine with that. He’s a very sweet God. I’ve written more on Him in my entry on Amun, if you want the whole story.

I don’t think the Mousai mind being companions either. I think the Mousai in particular are keen for me to be Their presence in the world and talk about Them to people who might not look to Them for inspiration. I think They are excited that someone knows Them and is willing to have a relationship with Them. They are such joyous Goddesses, full of song, and I think all They really want is to share that with the world again.

- I am a Follower of Hekate and Apollo
I find this relationship so hard to articulate, particularly as it is still so young. We are still very much getting to know each other. I know why I am working with Hekate; Sobek has pretty much fostered me out to Her, telling me there are things only She can teach me now that I need to learn.

I had never thought I’d work with Apollo though, but He owns my Goddess Oracle deck, and I think I will get much better readings (not that they aren’t great now) if I invoke Him before I read.

Reading back over all of this, it still seems a little odd, and I’m still weirdly afraid of people judging me, but tbh, if none of this made any sense at all? I’d probably think I really was going mad. But it makes sense. It makes a whole lot of things make sense in a way that they didn’t make sense before. That tells me this is something significant for me and not just some weird thing I’ve made up. I don’t think I could make up something like this no matter how hard I tried. It’s all to consistent, too persistent, to be just me making things up. Too many coincidences, too many things I just can’t ignore. So maybe

Also, I will get around to cross-posting my paganism meme entries here too, just so they’re here. They were up on the old site and I’d like them here too.

This is my Isian Shrine. The main open naos (shrine) at the back has … Satet, Nit, Aset, Hethert and Nebthet on the very top in front of a large winged and horned solar disc I made today. There’s also a white feather there for Ma’at.

On top of the two red boxes, we have a cheetah for Mafdet, and two cats for Bast. Behind them are seven stars for the West African goddess Yemaya. The left red box contains an unnamed male Netjeri of Bast-Mut. In the middle is Aset suckling Heru-sa-Aset. In the other red box is Faithful, from the Alanna series by Tamora Pierce.

Left side of the altar contains a grey stallion represeting Sobek-Castor, an image of Aset from Age of Mythology, some pennies and coins, a cauldron, and a bowl.

Right side of the altar contains a devotional image of Mary and some rosary beads, a papyus image of Aset, a brown horse representing Heru-sa-Aset-Pollux, two statues of Kwan Yin, two small offering bowls, a goblet for wine/juice, and a bell. Also an incense burner.

The middle section has more candles, an offering plate, a clay pentacle on top of that, and in front of that, my ritual knife and a clay wand (that I inadvertently made left-handed).

This is my devotional shrine, and contains images of pretty much every God I’m currently working with.

The left side is for ‘masculine’ energies and contains images and statues of Yinepu, Djehuty, Ganesha, Warrior!Sobek, and Apollo. There are a few little tokens and such there too, like dice for Djehuty.

The middle section is for other-gendered energies. This covers agendered, bigendered, two-spirit, genderqueer, androgynous, and all-gendered deities. Currently, there are icons and statues here of Creator God!Sobek, IDEK!Heru-sa-Aset, Amun, Djehuty, Ma’at, and the Mousai Titanides. Behind the white candle is a silver ankh and representations of the four elements.

The right side of the altar is for ‘feminine’ energies. There are currently images and statues here of Protective Mother!Sobek, winged Aset, Aset suckling Heru, Nekhbet, Wadjet, and Kwan Yin.

Creation:
An Account of the Creation of the Cosmos
by Sobek the Crocodile God, and His Twin/Son Heru-sa-Aset, the Shining Sun.

At first, there was nothingness. It is easy to imagine it as pure darkness, but that is not entirely accurate. It is easy to think of it as dark matter, but that is not entirely accurate either. It is matter, in a manner of speaking, and yet it is nothingness. The Creator had created Zirself, had come into being by thought alone, and now the Creator existed in the nothingness of space, from nothingness into nothingness.
The Creator did not yet have a name. At least, Zie did not have a name or form that had been revealed. The Creator knew it in Zir heart, but did not speak it. The sound was not to be heard yet, so it was hidden away. Zie was the Hidden One1.
At the centre of this nothingness sat the great Cosmic Egg2, which had been laid moments after the Creator had come into existence. It contained the Creator’s twinned spirit, Zir child, and Zie would tend to it with dedication and care until it was time for Zir to be born.

For a long time, and for a moment of time, this was all that existed. Until the Egg hatched.

It lasted a fraction of a second, and seemed to take forever. In glorious majesty, the Egg hatched, exploded into shining magnificence, and nothingness was washed away, transformed into somethingness. Freed from the egg, a sun was born, and its light shone over everything.
The Creator tended to the infant Sun, cared for the Zir twin and child, and watched the Cosmos form around them, as they remained where the Egg had been. The Creator had a name then. Zie called Zirself Sobek, the one watching over Zir twin3. Always watching, never taking Zir eyes from Zir child. Zie had called Zir child Heru, the High One. The Sun sat at the centre of every solar system, the one bright light in the sky of the planets traversing around it.

Together, Sobek and Zir twin/child Heru watched the birth of stars and planets. Watched matter come together to form something bigger and better. Brighter. Slowly, the darkness began to shine. It took a fraction of a second, and seemed to take forever. Everything seemed to take that long. Instantaneous and enduringly slow. The effects of time were still being written and the Gods of creation still being born. The Creator watched over it all, ensuring nothing went wrong. Zie sent Zir Netjeri4 out to assist, to tend to primitive planets and stars, forging them from the explosion of matter that had come from the birth of Heru.
Unbidden, the Lord of Time5began writing, marking Time into existence on His parchment. Slowly, things began to fall into order.

Once the stars and planets and galaxies had been made, they had to be filled with life. The Creator trusted no one but Zirself to plant the seeds of life all over the cosmos. Together with Zir twin, the Sun lit the way, while The Creator imbued planets with life.
They came to a small solar system in a spiral galaxy. Nine planets in all, with a couple of meteor belts, it was pristine and beautiful. The humble nature of the last planet was just as magnificent as the sheer size of the biggest, and The Creator felt life was to be had here. Lots of life.
There were two planets. Twins. Rocky hostile twins, but both contained the right potential for life. Both had large spans of water, large oceanic plains, and solid land. Volcanoes and thick atmospheres, too, but that could be fixed.
Setting foot on the first, Sobek planted the seeds of life in the oceans, and created some guardian spirits to watch over them. Life needed the quiet guiding hand of the cosmos to make sure it flourished. The same was done on the second planet. All that was left to do was wait to see how life would flourish.

It had seemed like an eternity since Sobek and Heru had returned to that humble solar system. The twin planets had shown their true colours. One was red, another blue. The red planet lay desolate and barren; the experiment had failed. Life was not to exist there anymore.
The blue planet, shining so brightly and beautifully against the blackness of space, was teeming with life. Here, conditions had been right, and life had flourished.
Sobek and Heru spent their time visiting all the life they found. Other Gods existed here now, those born from the Guardians sent to protect this planet. Sobek discovered He had form here. Some of the people had shaped Him after a crocodile. Sobek approved. He liked the ancient beast very much. Heru soared above the people, flying through the sky with bright brown wings. Everywhere, the echo of that first creation sung out, from the river people who drew Him as a crocodile, to those who had forgotten His twin, and to every part of civilisation on the planet. Earth, they called it. Earth. Sobek liked that. There was something satisfying about it. Earth.

He could not have stayed forever. Other parts of the Cosmos needed Him, and Heru, but He left His mark on the Earth and its people, asking them to remember Him. He would return one day to see how they were, but for now, they were on their own, until He heard His name being called again, thousands of years later, by people he had never seen before. He wept. His name echoed across the Universe, and Sobek once more returned to Earth, with Heru by His side to light the way.

Footnotes:
1. Amun is known as the Hidden One. His form and name are unknowable, hidden from the Seen world.
2. The Cosmic Egg references the birth/creation myth of Amun/Amun-Ra.
3. Sobek’s name means ‘watching over you’.
4. Netjeri (net-djeri) in this context are servants of the Gods. They are not considered Gods themselves, but they are spirits nonetheless. They assist the God and do their bidding.
5. Reference to Djehuty (djeh-hoo-tee). I resisted the urge to call Him a Time Lord.

1) What is the most interesting experience with Sobek?
They’re all interesting in their own way. He doesn’t talk much, He’s just there. I become aware of His presence.

The most recent one that I really remember was thinking on something I was told a while ago, Sobek is Amun is Ra (which, historically, makes sense*), only to be told it continues, Sobek is Amun is Ra is Ptah is Wesir.

…I still get a headache thinking about that one. o.O

* Sobek was seen as a form of Amun, and Amun-Ra, and this was His syncretised form, Sobek-Ra. The three are linked in that way. Even if it still makes my head hurt to think about it. They seem just so very… different. But at the same time, it somehow makes perfect sense. I can’t really describe how.

2) How do they communicate with you? (Through emotions, “coincidences,” voices, etc )
Emotions, a few words, dreams sometimes. He’s more of a ‘presence’ than a chatty sort of God. Sometimes all He has to say to me is ‘watching over you’, which is what His name means. One of those reminders He’s still there, even if I can’t feel Him around all the time.

3) If syncretized, does one Name seem stronger or more influential than the other? If aspected, do you ever get any impressions/feelings from the “flip-side” of this Netjer?
I wasn’t actually divined with Sobek having any syncretic or aspected forms, but He’s sort of developed a thing with Heru-sa-Aset over the years.

…I don’t know how to describe what He and Heru-sa-Aset are together. I’m not sure They really fit into either of these categories. They come to me as twins, which, as far as I can tell, has no historical basis. I know, historically, there was a syncretised Sobek/Heru-sa-Aset form, a hawk/falcon-headed crocodile, but Sobek’s told me this isn’t that form. So IDEK. /UPG.

Heru-sa-Aset is definitely much less chatty than Sobek though, which is quite a feat. I rarely feel Heru-sa around, and still don’t really know how to connect to Him. He’s very hard to grasp, and Sobek does all the talking anyway. Heru-sa defers to Sobek, so I talk to Him. Probably because I’m closer to Him. I would like to point out this doesn’t make it any easier to get to know Heru-sa if all Heru-sa does is point me back to Sobek.

…This is going to turn into one of those ‘Sobek is Amun is Ra’ things, isn’t it? I’m going to get another headache thinking about this, I just know it. >.<

4) Have you ever personally witnessed or experienced this Netjeru interacting with another Netjeru?
Heru-sa-Aset. He and Sobek are inseparable for me. As I said above, I don’t know if this is some sort of syncretic or aspected form. They just are.

Strangely, Sobek doesn’t really interact with Amun that much, even though there’s a weird linkage between Them. Amun, for me, is quite separate. He and Sobek aren’t really joined, and I remember Amun making it clear He was Amun, and not Amun-Ra. The names aren’t interchangeable; They’re different Gods. He gets tetchy if I call him Amun-Ra.

5) How does Sobek influence your life? (Words to motivate you, things “fall into place,” a swift kick in the rear when you need it, etc)
The ‘watching over you’ thing, just being there when I need it, those sort of things. He’s very quiet and subtle, and He’s not always around.

Sebek feels very ancient. Old and wise, but very powerful. Lots of solar energy. He has the ability to be cruel and kind, I think, though cruel may be the wrong word. He has a temper that’s quick and furious, but doesn’t seem to last long. Long enough to get His point across, I’d wager. He makes me feel very calm and safe, like He won’t let anything harm me. I get the sense He cares about me a lot, and that He’s willing to do anything to protect me.

He’s very beautiful to me, croc-headed and all, and I feel a lot of raw, solar, sexual energy from Him. He’s a calming presence though, constant and calming. I can feel Him now as I write about Him and make this site for Him. I’ve often found myself cuddling my 33cm polyresin croc with added gold markings around His feet, neck and eyes. I can’t express how much I can feel Him around now, and how much love I can feel from Him. He’s fearsome, yes, but gentle and protective. I don’t know what it is about crocodiles I find so comforting and attractive. I really believe they’re the most beautiful creatures on the planet, while my mum thinks they’re hideous. That makes me sad, that I can’t find anyone else who thinks crocs are beautiful apart from me.

I’ve had times when I’ve heard Him growling quietly to me. You know, that sort of deep, guttural growl that so sings to my soul. I’ve had dreams (it may have been a dream — alternatively, it’s an image that’s appeared in my head that’s stuck with me for quite some time) where I’ve been on the bank of a river, and it’s all muddy and there’s crocodiles everywhere. I emerge from the trees into the crocodiles’ territory. My eyes go straight to the largest crocodile of them all, who I know to be Sebek. I walk respectfully up to Him, this huge crocodile lying in the mud, with His tail pointing towards the water (just to orient you) and I lie in the mud next to Him, wrapping my arms around Him, feeling His rough skin, hearing His heart beat and His breathing, the growling coming from inside Him. My head’s tucked up behind His front left arm, and after a while, I can feel our bodies merging, like I’m being sucked up inside him, feeling warmer than I’ve ever felt before. There’s this incredible love between us, a bond I can’t even find the words to explain. I get the feeling that Sebek’s not the kind of God who’ll turn up for a few months then leave you in peace. If you get to know Him, you’ll know Him for life.

He represents the strength of the King, and He’s certainly my pillar of strength. When I feel Him around me, I feel like I can do anything. And I don’t feel that way very often. Realising the immensity, the profoundness of His love for me… sometimes, I feel like I don’t deserve it, but He never really goes away, and I haven’t managed to mightily piss Him off yet, so I can’t be doing too badly, then. Feeling that love makes me cherish my faith, removes any doubts I have that it’s all in my head. Gods, I can feel Him now. He’s happy, and He’s making me feel happy and loved. If He keeps this up, I might just cry. Gods, He’s making me cry now. Beautiful thing. It’s a very powerful thing to realise that kind of love between you and God.

Sebek was actually the last God I came across, and that was only because I didn’t know He existed until I saw Him in a book I bought second hand and realised the importance of a trip to the zoo. I can’t for the life of me remember when it was, but I’d gone to the zoo with my family (and possibly a friend). They’d just opened this new Wetlands of Australia exhibit and that was the first exhibit I went to. I almost made a bee-line to it. Without knowing where I was going, I ended up straight in front of the crocodile. His name’s Simmo, and he’s a beautiful 4m long saltwater crocodile. I remember just staring into his eyes and feeling something there something that wasn’t normal. Something beyond the mere physicality of a crocodile. Only when I saw His picture in a book that I connected the two events and realised He’d been trying to get my attention for a long time.

See, I’ve always been fond of crocodiles. I think they’re beautiful creatures. Living dinosaurs, some people call them. And they really do feel ancient, primeval, even. Beyond time itself. I don’t know why they feel this way for me, but they do. When I was younger, I was (and still am) in love with dinosaurs, especially the carnivores. I remember at one point I had a plastic (or was it rubber?) crocodile (not too dissimilar in principle to my current polyresin one) that I’d take everywhere. I used to chew on its tail. So much so that I ended up biting a 5 cm bit off the end of its tail. That crocodile incidentally came from the zoo as well. That zoo has a lot to answer for. Sebek must like it there. Just because it’s the only zoo in Perth doesn’t mean anything. It’s a very nice zoo. I’ve been to see Simmo several times. And I’m saving up enough money to get a chance to feed him.