KRT Revival: Modern Mythology

Despite being tardy, this was one of the most fun and meaningful KRT posts to date in my opinion. Although the prompt for Modern Mythology technically asked us to write about the topic of modern day Kemetic practitioners writing their own myths, many of us (myself included) chose to simply write these myths themselves rather than a persuasive piece, and I find that both telling and inspiring; when you put human beings in a sandbox, and tell them to talk about sandcastles, mostly they choose to build sandcastles instead. For my piece, I wrote a short myth explaining the origins and the function of my rituals for propitiating the Outlaw Dead. I consider it both a first draft, and an invitation to others who practice this type of ancestor veneration to extrapolate upon it -or indeed, to create your own mythology as it suits you.

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The chaos god Set wandered through the wastes surrounding the Duat, and contemplating what isfet remained hidden beneath the sands. So many human beings left to the ravages of time, unable to find the grace in the afterlife that they had been denied in life. Most of them were not evil or malicious, simply poor or unpopular, singled out for any reason under the sun to be denied the proper burial rites, and relegated to outlawry beyond the grave. As the patron god of foreigners, criminals, and rebels, Set was therefore tasked with the maintenance of those unruly souls in particular after their deaths. In addition to leading and defending his confederates and other sacred Dead as they made their way to the Duat to serve the gods in their afterlives, he was also responsible for dispatching and removing those who did not succeed in their quest. For those denied their mummification, the Book of the Dead, or any provisions in their tombs (indeed, they often even lacked marked graves or mourners) often remained trapped in the liminal spaces between this world and the next, they existed in torment until they became these monsters: muuet, the mutated, tortured remains of souls unable to find their way to the Hall of Judgement, or to any other appropriate afterlife. They went on to create all sorts of isfet and mischief in the lands surrounding the Duat, as well as in this life, and some even went so far as to side with A/pep, declaring war against the gods and all creation.

Set had patronage of these souls by tradition, but lacked the chthonic ability to transform these souls into Blessed Akhu, those like the NTRW, no matter how deeply he cared for them. And so the day came when he turned to Djehuty for his sage advice in how Set could solve this problem. “My people need me,” Set said, “but since I am the only one of us who cannot die, I cannot sustain dead human souls by my own strength alone. What can I do to protect them as I have promised?”

Djehuty listened carefully to Set’s predicament, nodding thoughtfully. “It is possible to provide the aid that these Outlaw Dead require,” he replied, “but indeed, not by your own strength. You must secure the aid of other gods if you are to prevent the Outlaw Dead from becoming muuet. Seek out Heru, and divine from his counsel how Set may comfort and provide for his own dead.”

When he heard of Set’s mission, Heru frowned, contemplating. “It is a noble goal,” he said slowly, “but the care and keeping of the Blessed Dead is Anubis and Osiris’ domain. Could you not simply assist in your wife’s duties?”

“These souls require different rites to be restored to their consciences and full power,” Set replied, “as well as being from various different nations. It would be inappropriate to use the same rites we use for the children of Aset and Osiris. I can lead and protect these spirits, but these rites would require the assistance of a true cthonic deity, or perhaps several, but I as the god of chaos and strife cannot perform the magic unassisted by other gods.”

“I see,” replied Heru, and the two agreed that Heru would travel to the Duat to consult Osiris as to how this problem would be solved.

Upon hearing of his brother’s dilemma, Osiris thought for a moment, and then said: “As lord of the Duat, I cannot grant your request. My position will not allow me to admit these Outlaw Dead to the Duat, for it would require me to break the sacred laws of Ma’at; nor can Aset assist as the head magician and mourner of these souls. Perhaps Set will find assistance outside of our pantheon, however, for he is after all the god of foreigners.”

Upon hearing this news, Set departed Kemet in search of other allies, while Heru agreed to ask the other NTRW if any could assist in this endeavor as well.

First Set approached Ishtar, his Mesopotamian consort and sister-in-arms, who herself had once navigated Kur in search of greater power. For old time’s sake and the glory of assisting in founding this new practice, she agreed to assist Set in the transfiguration and propitiation of the Outlaw Dead, filling in for the part of the great goddess Aset.

Then, Set approached Hermes, the Great Greek psychopomp and messenger god of thieves (sometimes referred to by the name of Djehuty or Thoth, as the Greeks thought he was similar to our god of knowledge), and explained to him the plan. “I am a god of chaos and storms, not a god of healing, resurrection, or the maintenance of tombs. Even with the ancient magics known to Osiris and Anubis, I require assistance from other gods to create an afterlife for these souls. Who do you know that could help?”

Hermes thought about this for a moment, and then suggested: “Then we will not attempt to create a new afterlife, but simply a temporary sanctuary. These Outlaw Dead can exist in their own liminal space, not Hades nor Duat nor Heaven nor Hel, and I will help escort them to their appropriate afterlife when they are ready. In the meantime, I’ll spread the word to other pantheons far and wide, to see if anyone who fits the bill cares to assist. Keep an ear out!” Set agreed, and Hermes departed to spread word of this new project near and far.

When Freya, the Norse goddess of love, war, and gold and the Lady of Folkvangr, heard of this, she was intrigued. Because Freya is traditionally awarded the first pick of the souls due to the Aesir, she possessed some mastery over the various lands of the dead; and besides that, many of those sacred to her (mostly sex workers, but also many others) were among the ranks of the Outlaw Dead, for it is usually women who are first targeted for any rebellion in patriarchal human society. Between her sympathy for her people’s ancestors, and not in small part out of her desire for a sacred place out of Odin’s sight, Freya developed an idea, which she shared with Set: that they could build a city in the desert surrounding Kemet to be a holy sanctuary for these Outlaw Dead that Set’s followers wished to venerate, one that through the ineffable magical workings of the gods would be invisible to uninitiated gods and spirits alike. Being the Lady of Gold, she would fund this project, building the infrastructure and allowing the active Outlaw Dead to decide how they should use their gold, in exchange for many holy places to her and the right to come and go as she pleased.

With these allies secured, Set asked Heru to approach his father once more, and ask for Osiris’ blessing for this new plan.

Heru told Osiris, and upon hearing this new proposal, Osiris contemplated for several minutes before concluding: “This plan will not contradict my duties as Lord of the Duat, and will keep many lost souls from preventing others from reaching Duat, or assisting our enemy the A/pep. I condone this use of Kemet’s magics, under the condition that first, Anubis be consulted when performing these rites in order to ensure their proper function; and secondly, that the followers of Set who perform these rites will ensure that the corresponding rites to venerate me and the holy Akhu of the Duat are also observed.”

And so, with the help of the two psychopomps and two goddesses wise in the ways of the Underworld, Set created the City of the Outlaw Dead, which his followers would later name Bennu, after the Ancient Egyptian creature that inspired the Roman phoenix. Followers of Set perform the rites to transfigure and feed his holy Dead, while spirits of different lands and creeds are allowed to move within and without the ranks of the Outlaw Dead by their own will -provided they mean no harm to members of the Outlaw Dead, of course. Ishtar and Freya maintain the city; Hermes and Anubis ferry souls to and fro while maintaining the correct order of the required magics; and Set, Lord of the Outlaw Dead, leads and protects them from outside threats.

And once again, due to cooperation between the gods and humans, isfet was defeated.

KRT Revival: Pragmatic Kemeticism

Religion and devotion is usually framed as a sacrificial act, purely in terms of what services we as human beings are supplying to the gods and spirits. While this is certainly a valuable approach, and most religious paths have these elements (including my own), for this KRT Revival topic, we’re focusing on what kemeticism does for us, the practitioners.

It’s almost taboo in neopagan spaces to openly ask, about our own religions: “What’s in it for me?” I believe this is due to our Puritanical religious conditioning to believe that seeking pleasure or power is inherently base and unspiritual, or the idea that life is a zero-sum game, and one can work toward philanthropy and spiritual enlightenment, or personal gain -but never both. Kemeticism being a faith that stresses the harmony between different and conflicting parts of the whole (Ma’at as the correct functioning of the self, the family, the community, the natural world, and the spiritual realm in tandem), it is actually entirely appropriate to occasionally put ideas of piety and reverence aside, and ask yourself what this religion can do to improve your life. The Ancient Egyptians certainly saw their faith as a way to materially improve and enrich their lives as well as their immortal souls, and so we should do the same in our modern revival.

An exercise I use to decide on what part of the traditions and perspectives from antiquity, as well as those from the modern day, I ultimately incorporate into my long term personal path is this: if it all turns out, at the end of my life, that I was wrong about all of this, will the things I did as a practicing Kemetic seem like time pointlessly wasted? Or will I still be able to look back at these practices as things that brought something valuable to my life in a practical sense?

The simple fact of the matter is that no religious person in existence can know for a fact that their gods and spirits are real, or that the universe is as their religion describes. Even people who experience visions and miracles cannot be 100% certain what caused those -it could have been a trick of the mind, or some natural scientific phenomenon of the universe that we still haven’t discovered, but nothing to do with the gods or spirits we’ve imagined. Faith is a beautiful and necessary thing, but if you have only faith and no skepticism or common sense, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime (and maybe an afterlife) of disappointments when the universe does not automatically conform to your own expectations. Faith and doubt are twins in the healthy human mind; it does us no good, psychologically, to be completely unable to cope with the reality that whether we like it or not, the truth may be that our gods do not exist at all, and no divine intervention is coming. If that turns out to be the case, though, it doesn’t mean that all of our years meditating, praying, researching, and practicing our faiths were a waste of time.

One of the biggest ways that Kemeticism has helped me pragmatically is that the process of making offerings to the gods involves a lot of basic self-care that is difficult to motivate myself to do when I’m running low on spoons. I need to wash myself, clean my shrine space (almost always my bedroom), ground and center myself with some meditation, and prepare some kind of food for the gods -and for myself to eat after the offering is done. There is great benefit in the act of service to something greater, but the process also involves taking care of oneself as an integral part of the practice. In this way we are reminded that we, too, are a part of the universe in need of care, upkeep, and maintenance, and that part of our duty to Ma’at is taking care of our bodies and minds. The insistence of tradition and of the gods of going through the motions of cleansing both the space, the ritual tools, and myself before going on with anything I had planned has started to ingrain the hobby into my general magical practice, which has been helpful. In general, many parts of kemetic practice are ideal for me to incorporate into my life, as someone living with untreated ADHD, because it provides enough structure and flexibility at once that I can build my daily schedules around the rituals and meditations I have planned.

Being a kemetic usually means connecting with the larger kemetic community in some form. Our religion emphasizes community, kinship, and human connection as one of the most central tenets of Ma’at. It encourages us to see our differences as legitimate and positive, as it takes many different distinct (and sometimes contradictory) forces to make up the totality of the universe and its functions. There is a refreshing and fascinating multiplicity of thought involved in Kemeticism. In antiquity, different temples in different nomes that were dedicated to different netjeru had differing accounts of their mythology. In this way, our religion encourages us to create stronger social bonds, including those with people different from ourselves. I believe that kemeticism, as a revived faith based on that of the ancient Egyptians, should pragmatically emphasize in our current communities the way the ancients believed in harmony between many different forces, and indeed, many different conceptions of how the world (including the gods) operated, regarding the social conservatism, imperialism, exploitation of others, and xenophobia of the ancient Egyptians as many Christians now regard the various crimes and atrocities committed by the Church throughout the last few thousand years. We have the great privilege of being the followers of the NTRW who connect the ancient ways and the modern ones, in a revival that synthesizes the value of both.

The gods themselves have been a great boon to my life, and their blessings and guidance have been crucial to not just my development, but my very survival. They taught me how to meditate, how to do magic, how to astral travel, how to face my own emotions, how to build healthy friendships and romantic relationships when no one else in my life had ever done so, and served as patient role models for me from a young age when no one else seemed up for the job. They taught me how to believe in myself. They taught me how to face my fears and conquer them. They’ve even given me advice on my stance and form when LARPing as a barbarian. Most of all, though, they’ve been my friends and confidants through a very long and very lonely time in my life. They were able to communicate and imbue me with their contagious indomitable spirit, that of gods who have been worshipped since the very dawn of civilization, as well as the great wisdom and intelligence that comes from having their many countless victories and defeats throughout the millennia. They taught me courage, perseverance, humility, compassion, pride…the list goes on and on. When I was younger I was horrified at the idea of having to share my brain, of anything outside of me being able to look in and see me, but after almost ten years of talking to Set and Heru, the idea of being completely alone inside my mind is now even more terrifying.

It’s a well-known adage that “religion is the opiate of the masses”, so much so that it’s a cliché at this point. The context of this, often ignored by Nu-Atheist types (who typically lean hard away from Marx and more toward smug neoliberalism, anyways), is that in Marx’s day, opiates were used in medical operations when the pain became too much for the patient to bear. Often when I light incense for Set and Heru for an offering, or set my coffee in front of Djehuty’s statue to cool while he stands regally between two stacks of books I have yet to read, or when I light a candle and sing for the Outlaw Dead and my beloved ancestors (now including two more grandparents than only a month or so ago), or when the relentless headlines about impending climate disaster and the COVID-19 pandemic begin to wear on my spirit, I understand the necessity of a structure and a meaning to life that is outside of the scope of this petty, cynical, greedy civilization we now live under. There is something intoxicating about being able to summon even the slightest fraction of these ancient, powerful beings from thousands of years ago, those who have seen greater empires than the one I now live under rise and fall, having survived in some form or another to the modern day to tell us about it all. With these gods, with heka and kemeticism in general, there is always something new and intriguing to discover about the beliefs of the people of Kemet. That feeling, the humbling feeling of awe and the sheer honor of being alive as we look back through this grand history of human development and advancement, is in many ways its own reward.

Kemetic Round Table Revival Masterpost

Since I can’t figure out how to add these new posts to the old KRT site, I’m just going to make a post that I can edit every now and again.

Ma’at and Isfet 

• Round Table Page for Ma’at and Isfet
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2020/12/21/krt-maat-and-isfet/
• https://secondgenerationimmigrant.wordpress.com/2020/12/20/krt-2020-maat/

Off the Beaten Path

• Round Table Page for Off the Beaten Path
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2021/02/26/kemetic-round-table-off-the-beaten-path/
• https://ptah-ikemi-ka.tumblr.com/post/641697872214097921/krt-off-the-beaten-path
• https://thelettucegardens.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/krt-off-the-beaten-path/

Priesthood

• Round Table Page for Priesthood
• https://witchbynight.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/kemetic-round-table-modern-day-priesthood/
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/573/
• https://ptah-ikemi-ka.tumblr.com/post/649846978533064704/krt-modern-priesthood
• https://secondgenerationimmigrant.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/krt-modern-priesthood-or-a-philosophical-dialogue-between-an-enby-and-an-akh/
• https://thelettucegardens.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/krt-modern-priesthood/

Akhu Basics

• Round Table Page for Akhu Basics
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/krt-akhu-basics/
• https://witchbynight.wordpress.com/2021/07/01/krt-akhu/
• https://thelettucegardens.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/krt-akhu-basics/
• https://ptahikemika.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/81/

Pragmatic Kemeticism

• https://tomsci-the-dwjehuter.tumblr.com/post/664514052716969984/kemetism-and-world-pragmatic-kemetism
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2021/11/01/krt-revival-pragmatic-kemeticism/
• https://ptah-ikemi-ka.tumblr.com/post/666606697305047041/krt-pragmatic-kemeticism/
• https://secondgenerationimmigrant.wordpress.com/2021/11/02/krt-pragmatic-paganism/

Modern Mythology

• https://archiveofourown.org/works/37493716/chapters/93572812
• https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2022/03/12/krt-revival-modern-mythology/
• https://tomsci-the-dwjehuter.tumblr.com/post/669398345075261440/new-stories-for-us-modern-mythology
• https://lavendernothings.tumblr.com/post/678647475626737664/krt-modern-mythology

If you wrote one and I missed it, or if you didn’t want yours posted here let me know and I’ll add/delete it!!

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FAQ

What are the remaining topics?

The remaining topics from the original KRT are as follows: Kemeticism is a Journey; Working with Heka; The Highlights of Kemeticism;  The Afterlife; Terminology; and Language Gods and Communication. The new topics added by people participating in in the KRT revival are as follows:

• Adapting Problematic Practices: How do we adapt problematic practices and myths from antiquity when they rub up against our morals and values? What about how that coincides with controversial topics within the larger Kemetic community, such as godspousing, eclectic Kemeticism, and the priesthood?
• Godspousing While Kemetic: What is your position on kemetic godspouses? What is your position on the KO’s and other Kemetic temples’ and communities’ stances on godspouses? Why?
• Epithets: What use do epithets have in modern kemeticism? How do you use epithets in your Kemetic practice? Why?
• Modern Rituals: What purpose do modern rituals serve and what should they look like? Why?
• Feminist Kemeticism: How does being a feminist affect a kemetic? What is your position on feminism in kemeticism? Why?
• Queering Kemeticism: How does being queer or LGBT affect a kemetic? What is your position on “queering” kemeticism? Why?
• Leftist Kemeticism: How does being on the political Left affect a kemetic? What is your position on leftism in kemeticism? Why?
• Kemeticism in Diaspora: How do we practice our religion without a unified homeland? What does it mean to be a solitary practitioner? In what ways has the area you live in affected how you adapt your faith? Why?
• Living in a Religious World: What is Kemeticism’s place in the world of religions? How should Kemeticism deal with other religions, pagan or not? What about atheists?
• Heka, Terminology and Language: how necessary is it? Is there a right or wrong way to use terminology and language in your practice? How do you work with heka? How can you utilize heka more in your day to day life? Any tips for people trying to get started in using heka?
• Kemeticism is a Journey: how has your practice changed since you started out? How did you find your place within the Kemetic sphere? What have you learned through trial and error that newbs may find helpful or useful?
• The Afterlife: How did the Egyptians view the afterlife? How do you view the afterlife? Does this effect your practice at all?

What are the rules?

• We’re running this revival democratically. If you want to vote on which topics we do and when, let me know and I can add you to our discord where we discuss and vote on stuff :>
• If you want to add your take on one of these topics (or one of the KRT topics we haven’t gone over as a group yet!) just let me know and I’ll add it for you. 
• I will add ANY post anyone asks me to to this post so long as it is both a) about the topics listed on the KRT site/listed below and b) not bigoted or drama-mongering by my metrics. If you think I’m censoring you for not adding everything automatically, make your own post. 
• You do not have to be in our discord, or on tumblr, or even a kemetic to add to this. You do not have to be “as good a writer” or “as knowledgeable” as the rest of us (by anyone’s metric) to participate! All we want is MORE participants!!

KRT Revival: Akhu Basics

Much has been said and written about Kemet’s reputation as a culture that was obsessed with death, and about the misconception that the faith of the people of Kemet was little more than a system of elaborate funerary rites exclusive to the aristocracy. This reputation goes so far as to sometimes prevent Egyptologists from interrogating any other religious aspect of the ancient religion of Kemet: “Even the title bestowed upon ancient Egyptian culture, ‘Pharaonic’, brooks a crucial question regarding the perception of what ancient Egyptian religion actually is and whether a focus on royal funerary ritual and paraphernalia leaves room for a religion of non-elites. Can one even employ the term ‘religion’ to a set of practices which have, up to this point, been largely interpreted within academia as a set of social and political royal functions?” (Profane Egyptologists: The Modern Revival of Ancient Egyptian Religion by Paul Harrison, p.53) If the longest-lasting monuments your ancestors built were meant to last until the end of time in order to guarantee your aristocracy’s continued existence in the afterlife, it’s understandable that historians millennia later would make that assumption. However, in the nearly eight years I’ve been studying and practicing kemeticism, I’ve learned that our faith is better described not as a death cult, but as a cult of life itself.

The ancient Egyptians had great reverence and religious piety toward the joys and pleasures of life on Earth -the majestic beauty of our planet, the cycles of life that allow us to grow food and raise livestock from nothing but seeds and dirt, all of the highs and lows of a normal human existence- and their extensive funerary practices show they believed that achievement, joy, and relationships they made in life could be preserved and extended into eternity. They also believed that the process of transformation between a living human and a living Akh was not simply a journey to the afterlife where their eternal soul would be condemned or preserved, but also a type of apotheosis. When the Dead become Justified Akhs, they become “like one of you [the NTRW]”. To the ancient Egyptians, death was both an eventuality to dread, as well as the first of many steps of initiation into divine, eternal life.

As well as priests of the NTRW, there were priests in antiquity whose main responsibility was to the Akhu. These priests were known as wab-priests. Typically, especially in the older periods of Kemet’s history, the cults of the Akhu would be maintained by priesthoods who accepted funding in exchange for continued offerings to one’s dead family members (and eventually, one’s own immortal soul). These cults were also maintained by regular people in holy burial places that were available to the general public, in a manner more elaborate but in a similar vein as our modern practices of leaving flowers, or sometimes offerings of candles and food, near a person’s headstone or at a shrine at the place where they died:

“A close analysis of the tombs reveals that sometimes they formed true familial groups, where the mastabas of some prominent members of the same family were built together and surrounded by minor ones belonging to less important branches of the family or just to clients, the whole forming family complexes like those well known of the Senedjemib or Ptahhotep/Akhethotep at Saqqara. In other cases, a single mastaba formed a funerary familial complex on its own as it contained both a main funerary chamber as well as several funerary shafts used as secondary inhumations for the members of the owner’s family. This probably implies that a funerary monument also encoded other ideological values, more closely related to the private sphere, where the fact of belonging to a broader kinship-based social group also found its way of expression in a kind of elite monument originally conceived just for only one person, the distinguished official allowed to build his mastaba in close proximity to his sovereign. This also means an alternative, complementary use of a mastaba, as this monument expressed simultaneously two sets of ideological values, one stressing the social centrality of the king and the other the importance of the extended family, an aspect usually shadowed by the palatial ideology and avoided in official monuments.” – Oracles, Ancestor Cults and Letters to the Dead: The Involvement of the Dead in the Public and Private Family Affairs in Pharaonic Egypt, Juan Carlos Moreno García, p.3

To the Ancient Egyptians, having the means to have statues of yourself made and scribes to record a flattering list of your good or great deeds and humble, generous, wise, pious nature in order to guarantee your good name’s longevity was preferred, and surely these examples are the ones we have the most of to this day. However, the idea that one absolutely had to be mummified or have another physical representation of one’s selfhood left on Earth in order to have a chance at spiritual salvation, is something of an oversimplification, if not a flat-out misconception. A person’s immortal soul is preserved first by the memory in the minds of their living family, friends, acquaintances, and enemies. An illiterate peasant without a penny to their name, if they lived a good life and gained a good reputation amongst their peers for being honest and decent, had a better chance of making it through the Hall of Judgement and becoming a holy Akh than an aristocrat whom the gods and ancestors knew was lying about being generous and fair all of his life.

In comparison to some other Kemetic practices, namely rituals and offerings done in the name of the NTRW, Kemetic practices to propitiate our ancestors are less popular in the modern day. Some use rites adapted from ancient practices of wab-priests, which summon the Dead to take refuge in the Eye of Heru, represented by a lit candle, and use heka and offerings to make the Dead Justified, equating them with Osiris and the practitioner with Aset, Heru, or Thoth as the caretaker, protector, and facilitator of the Akh’s eternal life and vitality. As with most modern adaptations of ancient rituals, it is up to the practitioner’s discretion how much to deviate from the ancient Kemetic formulas and magics, or how much we believe the information we have accurately represents the beliefs and practices of ancient Egyptians. As of now, I do a minimum of two full-length rituals per year for the Akhu and two rituals for my own ancestors (some of which are Akhu, some of which are not), the Outlaw Dead. Ideally, I would be doing a rite to propitiate both groups of the Dead in the spring and summer months, and a rite to transfigure wandering or ignored spirits into these groups of the Dead in the fall and winter months. The rites I use are all based off of Reidy’s work, but the rituals for the Outlaw Dead are necessarily further adapted to use this ancient magical tech to transfigure, feed, and strengthen the spirits of my ancestors who have not necessarily passed through the Hall of Judgement and earned the right to reside in the Duat. I also do less formal, more regular offerings to the Outlaw Dead, nigh on identical to the regular offerings I do to the NTRW on my altar, except that for offerings to the Dead I consider the flame of a candle the focal point for the spirits represented by their icons, whereas for the NTRW I eschew lit candles for everyday offerings in favor of incense alone.

Over the years I’ve encountered no small amount of controversy over the topic of venerating the dead, from people who disdain the practice for themselves personally due to greater feelings of love and devotion to one’s gods than one’s ancestors (who often even in death sometimes maintain attitudes and ideologies that modern people find immoral), to people who insist that the gods could never be as loving or as involved in one’s life as the ancestors, to people who insist that anyone who doesn’t perform ancestor veneration of some kind is a “bad” polytheist and “doing polytheism wrong”. I personally see ancestor veneration as the duty of the living, but also no more a requirement for a healthy and functional practice than deity worship or connection with “spirit guides” of any kind. That said, I believe that many kemetics (and pagans in general!) would benefit from venerating the sacred Dead, largely because it is the constant demonstration of the human determination to love each other beyond the grave; even those who are beyond our ability to feed, heal, or hold as we do other living people, will not be left behind. In traditional Kemetic practice, the magical tech we use is specifically designed to make our ancestors “like the gods”, Justified and divine in their own right. The cynical interpretation of this would suggest that the ancient Egyptians were simply using their ancestors as diplomatic envoys between the living and the gods, or propitiating their ancestors in order to attain their help or avoid their ire. However, I believe that the practice of serving the Akhu and the other blessed Dead, in context with Kemetic teachings on ma’at and conceptions of the universe (both Seen and Unseen), there has always also been the spiritual confirmation of all humanity, living and dead, as manifestations of the divine energy and consciousness of existence, through the magical and ritual methods of Kemet’s famous funerary practices. To quote an article in the Journal of Social Archaeology:

“Death was as socially riven as the realm of the living. Vast amounts were invested in royal and elite monuments, while cemeteries as a whole cannot account for more than a fraction of the population. Preservation of the body was essential for conventional conceptions of an afterlife – often envisaged to take place away from the tomb – but embalming practices cannot have been required for all. The contradictions implied by divergences from the ideal were negotiated over very long periods. Such processes of accommodation may be particularly necessary in complex societies and civilizations. They emphasize that, even if the actors may present the matter otherwise, treatment of the dead relates as much to the living as to the deceased.” (Burial and the dead in ancient Egyptian society: Respect, formalism, neglect by John Baines and Peter Lacovara)

Akhu veneration in antiquity was probably, in my opinion, largely about reinforcing Kemet’s worship of itself, its aristocracy, and its identity as a nation. However, even seasoned Egyptologists with a genuine, passionate interest in erasing academia’s preoccupation with portraying Kemet as a land of particularly interesting but semi-barbaric historical anomalies who started and maintained humanity’s most long-standing death cult, have trouble treating any aspect of their faith with even half of the dignity they treat a modern day atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Hindu with. Academia simply does not have respect for religiosity in general, so maligned and sabotaged are they by fundamentalist believers of any modern-day majority faith, that it is very difficult for academics of any kind to resist the urge to laugh in someone’s face when they suggest that the faith of Ancient Egypt was not just legitimate and helpful for an ancient peasant in Kemet, but also legitimate and helpful to modern-day people, Egyptian or not. Besides which, while ancestor veneration is of course a major factor in most people’s lives (visiting graveyards, spending thousands on funerals, embalming or cremating the body according to the Dead’s wishes when they were alive, etc), anything other than the Christian folk version of ancestor veneration is derided by most modern Anglo-Saxons as a sort of defective, inherently “spooky” thing to do (i.e. modern American Christians’ general distaste and distrust for hoodoo, voodoo, santeria, Dios Los Muertos, etc). In reality, however, not only does ancestor veneration increase one’s empathy for the Dead, and by proxy the living, the Kemetic practice of Akhu veneration fundamentally improves one’s subjective experience of the human condition.

Ancestor veneration in the style of the Ancient Egyptians, where the holy Dead are elevated to the Name of Osiris and Justified by the Feather of Truth, in order to be transfigured into deities in their own right, inherently requires you to acknowledge all living humans as beings as being in the first phase of their ascension into literal divinity. Here in Red State, USA, in the year 2021, the cultural zeitgeist is one that rewards misanthropy, selfishness, greed, and the shameless narcissistic attitude that compassion and humility is for suckers and caring about anyone outside of your own immediate social circle makes one a loser, or at least, hopelessly and tragically naïve. As climate change and new variants of COVID-19 continue to push both natural and man-made disasters closer and closer to humanity’s event horizon, beyond the point which most societies will collapse and those that survive are sure to live nasty, brutish, short lives, the effort of maintaining one’s faith in humanity has become nigh on overwhelming. It is tempting to assume that the human condition is not that of “the falling angel meeting the rising ape”, but rather that of a newer, more arrogantly ape whose ancestors once delusionally imagined some funny-shaped clouds to be winged, sentient beings they called angels. The people of Kemet, however, had very little of the self-destructive hatred and disgust that we modern Anglo-Saxons have toward our own species. They did not only see life as a divine experience to be protected and maintained at all costs, but they considered the inherent human worth and human dignity of their Dead to be worth investing most of their expendable time, money, and emotional resources in; in order to give their loved ones and themselves even a slightly better chance at making it through the Hall of Two Truths and not be erased from the memory of the living, they built statues and pyramids so grand they are still considered among the most impressive man-made structures ever built.

In a world like the one we live in, I personally need a reason to believe in the inherent value and worth of human life, even once the flame of life has been extinguished, even more than I need to believe in my gods or in the possibility of a pleasant afterlife. I am grateful to Set for introducing me to the practice of Akhu veneration, and grateful to the Dead for teaching me all they have in our path together, and grateful to the people of Kemet for writing down enough of their funerary practices that I could, thousands of years later, rekindle the spark they created and walk through the Valley of Death with the light of their ancient torch in my left hand, and the comfort of my ancestors and Akhu guiding me.

A Setian Manifesto: The Beast Among Us

Me and my fiance are finally both vaccinated, but as we expected from the beginning of 2020, the next horror of the COVID-19 pandemic has only just begun. I recently heard a rumor that Donald Trump is telling his followers that he will be re-instated as President sometime this August, after the heat and the coming droughts and food shortages have begun to make their ugly faces known to Americans, so it seemed like a good time to post this. I would also like to thank G. B. Marian of The Desert of Seth for proofreading this for me, and encouraging me to post it as is.

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There is a force at work among us, one that quite literally wants millions of us dead, and cares not for the suffering of countless billions of others so long as it gets the pound of flesh it believes it is due. Although this, its current incarnation, seems distinctive, do not be fooled: like a snake shedding its skin, the forces that birthed this abomination have existed throughout history. This is just the most recent evolution of an ancient evil, the version that has yet to be defeated. The force takes many forms, but its first form is always subtle. It takes hold of its human victims by finding and exploiting the worst aspects of our natures, using selfishness or bitter anger towards ones’ fellow human beings to distort ones’ perception until their goals align perfectly with the beast’s.

It is a grisly thing to witness, although it does not start with blood and gore. A normal person’s capacity for empathy toward others is whittled away with flimsier and flimsier excuses and claims designed to feed panic and keep people in a state of eternal paranoia. As enough time goes by, and if no one intercedes on behalf of human decency, even the victim’s capacity for critical thinking is worn away. The beast can only reach its power over individuals by filling them with hate and fear the likes of which can only be fed by lies and manipulation, and so dependent do its victims become on the monster, they will abandon reason in order to remain in its good graces. They not only cease to be capable of determining truth from lies, but they cease to care about the difference. They cease to believe in words or their meanings. They become emptied out of everything human and live only to obey.

If this vile hypnosis was caused by some vision of paradise, the beast would still be a horror; but the real horror is what the faithful damned are hypnotized by: they subsume all other desires in their souls and replace it with the desire to flatten their reality into one straight line, where everything is the same and nothing ever moves, where everyone has forgotten joy, music, art, and freedom- and of all the glorious violence it will take to accomplish this vision. Everyone holds the ability to hate and destroy in their heart; human societies usually designate an unlucky few that the majority is encouraged or required to ignore, demean, or despise; the beast can only sustain itself through the blood of its followers’ victims; and its followers will believe anything the beast tells them to. The solution is simple. It uses its lies and brutality convince its followers to target one after another, starting with the easiest targets -the young black man being harassed by the pigs, the gay kid getting beat up every day at school, the sex worker with no one to protect her and nowhere else to go- and ensures it always has enemies to feed upon, and that its followers are always ready to slaughter, or to terrorize, or to demoralize, or to quietly, politely, and tirelessly labor to ensure the beast’s current and future ability to do so.

Its hunger for human suffering knows no bounds, and it will devour its own in order to further rape, loot, and pillage every piece of humanity that it cannot draw into its fold. In societies under control of the beast, all impulses of mercy, humanity, liberty, justice, or love, are subsumed in the name of keeping the beast’s commandments. The people live in a state of controlled insanity, taking great pains to project the outward charade of control, superhuman precision, and unquestionable power.

This is not caused by a malevolent spirit or brain-eating virus, although it could easily be mistaken as one from the outside. This is no horror movie monster; and in that way, it is all the more horrific. It breathed its first ugly breath in the authoritarian Republic of Rome, where men first used the symbol of the fasces to represent the legal power of the magistrate as well as Roman tradition; many birch rods fastened together to represent “strength through unity”….as well as the practice of corporal punishment, for authority figures would use a bundle of birches to beat their inferiors on their buttocks, back, or shoulders. This was the origin of Italian Fascism, as designed by Mussolini; the Roman Empire itself became the inspiration for a delusional German anti-Semite’s vision of world domination through eternal warfare on every non-Aryan, non-German, disabled, queer, or disobedient human being alive. When these men were allowed to gain power in the last century, they did the bidding of their abominable master and killed 6 million Jews as well as millions of others through persecution, not to mention the millions that died in the war the rest of the world fought to stop them. The beast and its followers lost that war, but the legends of the Aryan Ubermensch and the grand White Utopia they spilled metric tons of blood in order to build survived to hypnotize new generations of prejudiced white men and women, as well as confuse and paralyze millions of others with the beast’s threats and lies. Such a way of life can never bring anyone (either its participants or its victims) peace, because their way of life is built upon the extermination of undesirables, and must always have a new target. In this way thought is suppressed, and the human race becomes a vehicle for endless, fruitless slaughter.

As horrific as this may sound, however, there is hope: the beast’s unerring control over its victims -or potential victims- is not as invincible as it pretends. The first thing to remember is that all of the blood and horror it causes hides its weakness: it hypnotizes through fear. The lizard brain part of you that tells you to fight, freeze, fawn, or flee is taken hostage and manipulated by the beast, and the effect is terrifying, but if you can resist the fear it has little else to attack with. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but we can do it together. Educate yourself and your comrades on the beast’s history and tactics, and the proud history of resistance from people of widely varied backgrounds and political beliefs in the name of human decency wherever the beast has incarnated throughout history. Find any pockets of sanctuary the beast may find in your communities, online or off, or even within your own mind (never assume you are too wise or righteous to be deceived!), and work with your like-minded comrades to weed them out; make their presence intolerable for both those around them, and for them, wherever they try to make a claim. Find trustworthy individuals to organize these operations, in whatever form they may take, before you approach them; most of them are paper tigers, but not all. Be smart. Be sneaky. Be prepared. Be brave.

The second thing to remember is that our true enemy is the beast, and while its followers must be stopped from enacting their wicked plans by any means necessary, we must not forget the possibility that they can be led back to their humanity. We must not forget that the beast most often hypnotizes human beings who feel their society has let them down, who feel demoralized, hopeless, and humiliated, and are therefore more willing to accept the caustic lies encouraging them to channel their frustration into ever-greater prejudice and hate. Organizations such as Life After Hate and individuals such as Daryl Davis have successfully de-radicalized fascists who were once so far lost to the beast that one would expect them never to return; it is not viable as the only tactic for reducing their numbers and power, but peaceful reconciliation is possible and should be pursued when strategically viable. We will not allow our sympathy for these humans-gone-wrong to prevent us from stopping them, but neither will we allow ourselves to imitate their belief that their political enemies are subhuman and deserve nothing less than extermination. You cannot defeat the beast using the beast’s own tools; too many promising freedom fighters and revolutions of the past, claiming to oppose the beast and the global infrastructure that feeds and houses it, have become as cruel and tyrannical as the societies owned by the beast because they failed to value the basic human dignity and liberty of all humanity, including reactionaries, the pigs and the bourgeoisie, and political enemies of all kinds. If we wish to remake the world into a more just and merciful place, we ourselves must be just and merciful, even toward the footsoldiers of our greatest enemy.

Not so, however, toward the beast. A/pep existed before this political situation, before this entire society, and i/t breathed i/ts evil breath of life (or rather, its desperate and hollow imitation of life, more aptly named “the survival of people who look like me by any means necessary”) into uncountable political and economic systems, innumerable powerful leaders and innumerable bitter peasants throughout history. None of us are immune to our ability to be twisted into an evil version of ourselves. None of our philosophies or political systems are immune to the same. If we are to defeat this current incarnation of the demon sn/ake we must recognize this crucial fact. We must be humble enough to realize that we need to learn, to train ourselves to oppose this beast in all its forms, and that we must build the strongest alliances we can. Who better to start with, than the Lord of Power and Strength; the god worshipped as early as the Stone Age as the patron of all the reviled huddled masses in an ancient powerful empire that is no more; the god of rebels, He Who Commands the Riot; the god famous in his pantheon for being the mightiest slayer of A/pep from antiquity?

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KRT Revival: Off the Beaten Path

I had a lot of trouble getting started on this one because my faith, in practice, is less “veering off the beaten path” than it is “accidentally comes across the beaten path in passing once in a blue moon”. My introduction to kemeticism, or at least to kemetic gods, was ugly, messy, and traumatic; the kind of thing you don’t talk about publicly unless you want to take the risk of being dogpiled for saying that the gods hurt you and that they were wrong to do so. Besides which, before I had ever even summoned the nerve to defy God and google the words “Egyptian pagan”, I experienced Set making it viscerally clear he wanted a romantic and sexual relationship with me. Being a 14 year old Christian at the time, I was terrified and mortified and assumed I would never be able to talk to anybody about what was happening to me. Imagine how much more incredulous I was when Heru indicated a few years later that he wanted that kind of relationship with me as well! (I had never even heard of healthy polyamory at that point!) To this day, the leader of the Kemetic Orthodoxy takes the official position that the existence of kemetic godspouses is impossible, and people like me are just too dumb to realize that the NTRW could never love us in that way. Considering how large swaths of the larger pagan community are obsessed with respectability politics, sometimes godspouses are treated as a punching bag for “normal” pagans to distance themselves from the social stigma of being a werido who worships Ra and believes in magic, to prove to themselves and others that they’re “one of the good ones”.

I don’t blame people who think that the idea of being in a serious romantic relationship with a god is weird or far-fetched, but it is it really significantly weirder than believing the gods do anything else that we believe they do? It’s not as though the idea that gods and spirits would want to have sex with, or fall in love with, mortal humans is completely unheard of in historical sources (including in some Egyptian sources that talked about goddesses having sex with Pharoahs and other royal family members). Why would gods from pre-Christian societies adhere to our modern Puritanical views of sex and romance being dirty, degrading, or a “base animal instinct” that is incompatible with genuine, serious religious faith and devotion? Why would the NTRW, with only one established online temple with a nisut and no priesthood infrastructure to support the ancient policy of only and exclusively interacting with the richest and most powerful members of their society, refuse to adapt their methods in order to gain offerings and worship? With the comparatively few historical records we have about any of the daily lives of the common people, are we really supposed to believe that it’s impossible the gods ever did anything in addition to the stuff we have that’s historically verifiable in the first place? At the end of the day, if you think that the idea is stupid you’re not going to be talked out of it; but neither are you going to convince me, or any other godspouse, that these relationships are a figment of our imagination. I wouldn’t have stopped being a devout Christian and put myself in a position where I was even further alienated from my family and culture as a minor if what I was experiencing wasn’t, to me, as real as anything else going on in my life, and if continuing to try to force myself to deny what had become my new reality, my new normal, wasn’t tearing me apart psychologically.

Besides all that, I’ve always been a person for whom gods of various pantheons appear and express interest in a relationship or in working together with some regularity. I never thought this was unusual at all until I started talking to other pagans and realized that, while eclectics do exist and it’s not exactly taboo, it looks like most people generally stick to one or two pantheons at a time. I’m not sure if it’s significant or not, but it certainly makes a lot of aspects of kemeticism somewhat unusual when I have the ability to go to an entirely different pantheon’s god for work that I need to do, but don’t want to do under the supervision of the NTRW for one reason or another. I spend a not-insignificant amount of time in the astral networking with entities I’m interested in working with (or whom I may need to pay off for a favor at some point) from all over the place. My UPG regarding this is that the NTRW find it useful to have somebody they can send off to talk to a god, or anybody really, who resides in a part of the astral that they would have more trouble getting to (safely and quietly, anyways) than them: “Oh hey Smarmy, didn’t you say you were going to go talk to Loki soon? When you do, be sure to get the message to Freya that she’s invited to Sekhmet’s festival next week!” (A fake example, but you get the gist.)

Even my actual practice of kemeticism seems always one or two steps removed from the “traditional” most of the time, although I usually try to start with the most traditional version of stuff that I can realistically pull off. My ancestor veneration is a great example: I built the practice with the ritual tools for the transfiguration, glorification, and propitiation of the Akhu in the Duat, and modified them to a practice that does the same thing for my ancestors, biological and ideological, who have not necessarily passed through the Hall of Judgement to reach the Duat: the Outlaw Dead. I recently found from browsing the online Anarchist Library that what I was trying to achieve with the Outlaw Dead is already a sort of tradition, referred to as spiritual anarchism. Between that and my magical workings being based far more heavily on chaos magic principles than in heka or anything kemetic really, I always stick out like a sore thumb among the NTRW and their assistants in the Duat. They value tradition and authority and always seem a little distrustful of my preference of handling a lot of my business with “foreigners”. ‘Why not just keep it within the family? We’ve got everything you could possibly need right here in kemeticism!’ seems to be the most usual reaction -from the spirits I’ve spoken to in the Duat, at least. However, compared to their reactions to me truthfully expressing my philosophical and political views on hierarchy, authority, and state power (all bad), my penchant for travelling outside the Duat on the regular is just a slight quirk as far as they’re concerned.

Being a godspouse and talking about the phenomenon I refer to as “divine abuse” (when a human experiences a god abusing them in some way) are the most controversial “off the beaten path” thing I do here on Earth, but my anarchist methodology is the thing the gods seem to actually consider the weirdest, and sometimes most isfetic, thing about my path. My philosophical and moral objections to the idea that the divine right to rule ever existed, as well as to the idea that authority and hierarchy are  holy concepts and the only possible way to organize a healthy society (or that societies that have them can even be referred to as “healthy” at all), defines everything from the formulation and use of my heka outside of rituals, to the sorts of rituals I’m willing to write and perform for the NTRW, to the spirit work projects I’ve been given, to my approach to my relationship with various NTRW and the pantheon as a whole. It’s not always a problem according to the NTRW; similarly to how they’ll give me particular tasks because I like to visit and work with gods from all over, they seem to take the position that there are some situations in which my anarchic ways and philosophy make me useful to them, and they’re willing to tolerate the annoying parts of working with me because it gives them one more tool at their disposal in the long run.

For the most part though, it doesn’t seem like anything I’ve listed genuinely upsets any of the NTRW -or if it does, they don’t let on. It’s human beings that make being weird in any way so unnecessarily difficult and isolating, and honestly, I’d be lying if I said it never gets to me. Having been rejected by the religious community that meant everything to me as a child, both by being part of various demographics the local churches hated and by being the sort of child for whom “because God/the Bible said so” never really cut it as an answer, was obviously very painful. Like most pagans, I hoped to find a supportive community to talk about experiences with and to share fellowship; and like many pagans, I found that being candid publicly about anything unusual or controversial within pagan spaces, is just plain not worth the backlash you get nine times out of ten. After hanging out in online and meatspace pagan spaces for roughly five or six years at this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that the general pagan public is somewhat obsessed with respectability politics. Constantly, people whose practices and religious philosophies most closely resemble Christianity (or culturally Christian atheism) with their strict following of religious dogma; aversion to the idea of humans doing magic, having real agency in their spiritual lives, or gods taking active roles in our lives as anything but distant, wrathful deities ready to smite at the smallest whiff of disrespect; black-and-white morality, with humans as inherently dirty and so flawed the gods are always justified in hurting us in any way; their gods as invariably right and moral even when they are doing monstrous things (these same people who invariably are be furious when compared to Christians, despite having the exact same attitude toward their religions as the pastors who used to tell everyone God required them to torment me and mine and believe that dinosaur fossils are a trick from the Devil in order to get to Heaven); they relish in making a sport of finding some teenager on WitchTok saying something stupid and making them that day’s example of Bad Stupid Pagans Who Are Not Serious And Good Pagans Like Us. We, as a community, are so insecure from the mainstream considering us evil, crazy, or weirdos, that we effectively hold our own witch hunts of a sort: we find pagans who believe in weirder shit than we do (by our standards) or who aren’t academic or loyal enough to history and good taste (by our standards), and we scapegoat them in hopes of that somehow gaining us respect and acknowledgement from the mainstream that, in reality, looks down on all of us regardless.

But the most contentious thing I believe is that divine abuse exists. A related, but more benign concept can be described as having a divine antagonist; the theory that at times, deities antagonize humans because the human is dealing with a warped version of their ideals or aspects in their own personality or psyche, and the antagonism represents a genuine chance to develop past your shortcomings. I think it’s highly likely that many situations where a person is experiencing a god pushing them around and ignoring their boundaries is some version of this phenomenon. It’s very likely that in many situations where a human thinks a deity is out to get them, it’s actually a projection from trauma or a thousand other things that can harm one’s discernment -but that’s not my call to make about anyone else’s spirituality, nor anyone else’s to make about mine. I worry that my talking about this publicly may make people paranoid it could happen to them, therefore increasing the chances of their anxiety manifesting something nasty; but I have to say how I think things really are, and I think that although the gods are good and great and worthy of worship, they sometimes make mistakes, and they sometimes put their own interests over even those of the humans who love them the most. I think it’s stupid to tell people that such-and-such god “isn’t for beginners” and you absolutely must be a practicing witch for some amount of time or read a certain amount of scholarly books in order to safely worship a deity who was once worshipped by entire societies, including children; but I don’t think we’re doing any spirit workers or mystics any favors when we say that it is categorically impossible that a god is choosing to abuse their power over a human, and that the human would be better off by trying to remove that deity from their life altogether.

 The vitriol and mass shaming you generally run into if you publicly say that our gods did something wrong honestly never fails to shock me, no matter how many times I see it. People say you’re crazy, or that you just “expect deities to be hugboxes” and that you’re clearly just misunderstanding “tough lessons” as abuse.  All I can say to that is, in my years in pagan circles, I’ve ran into far more people with stories like this than some people would have you believe; most people who I’ve talked to about it have confirmed they avoid telling people about it because of how they’ve learned to fear how other people will react. And who can blame them, when people often react to this topic by insisting that the only possible reason a god could do something harmful to a person is if they’re a bad person who deserves what’s happening to them, either for disrespecting the gods or for being an abusive douchebag in general? If you really feel that your gods must be 100% perfect, incapable of making mistakes or being wrong to be worth worshipping, that all the myths that portray gods doing bad things must only and exclusively be interpreted as metaphors, that working with all deities is 100% safe and no bad things can ever happen to good people as a result of it, well…I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong by believing that, but you don’t get to insist that everyone who doesn’t is a bad or fake polytheist -much less a bad person.

I’m a revivalist rather than reconstructionist because I fundamentally believe that radical changes to our traditional religious organization and philosophy from antiquity are necessary to a long-lasting, healthy revived kemetic polytheist tradition. Being a pantheon so focused on tradition and loyalty to the past, I believe that we ought to do things as traditionally as possible as far as rituals and offerings;  however, it’s no better for me to deny my convictions or experiences with how magic, the astral, and the spirits and gods in it work, in order to conform to what is “traditional” or “normal” by modern standards in kemeticism, than it was for me to do the same for Christianity. I struggle with my insecurities and with the deep wound from childhood onward caused by being consistently rejected by my peers and religious community, but I am overall content with my decisions and my path, no matter what anybody might say. Finally, I’ll leave you with a chunk from a piece of anarchist theory that I feel captures the perspective I practice kemeticism from, as a follower of the “evil” god of the desert and wilderness:

“The extent to which global heating will cause the expansion of hot deserts is unknown but that they will do so — and drastically — is a pretty safe bet. The interaction of soil, climate and civil power will continue to be a dominant factor determining both history and the opening up of territory for freer lives. That agricultural systems will fail as the arid worlds spread means that, once again, civilisations will have to retreat from much of their previously conquered lands. In some places this will be total, in others a matter of degrees.

In my mother tongue deserts are uninhabitable, abandoned, deserted ; but by whom? Not by the coyotes or the cactus wrens. Not by the harvester ants or the rattlesnakes. Not by the namib quicksteps, the meercats, the acacias, the tahrs, the sandgrouse and the red kangaroos. Deserts and arid environments generally are often biologically diverse, though by their nature, the life is sparser than in other biomes. While some desert areas are lifeless, in most communities of animals, birds, insects, bacteria and plants run, fly, crawl, spread and grow in lives unordered, undomesticated by civilisation. Wildness is in us and all around us. The battle to contain and control it is the constant labour of civilisation. When that battle is lost and the fields are deserted, wildness persists. Behind the dust, meanwhile, under the vulture-haunted sky, the desert waits — mesas, butte, canyon, reef, sink, escarpment, pinnacle, maze, dry lake, sand dune and Barren Mountain.”

Beautiful Feast of the Outlaw Dead

This is an adaptation of the ritual rubric in Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World by Richard J. Reidy, posted in anticipation of a group ancestor veneration ritual we’re doing on the 28th.

(Traditionally to be performed on the day of the New Moon.)

Required Materials

Icon of Set

Icon of Outlaw Dead

Lighter/matches

Incense + incense holder

Four red candles

2 to 15 white candles (ideally there would be 14 candles for each faction of the OD, and one for Set. if you are only working with, say, 3 specific OD factions, you only need 4 candles. If you don’t want to deal with the fire hazard, 1 candle for Set and 1 for the OD collectively will work.)

Offerings: traditionally, bread, beer, “water from the inundation” (water you’ve blessed beforehand is a good modern interpretation of flood water from the Nile), wine, milk, incense, and cool water. Bread, beer, wine, and milk can be replaced with another offering or with votive offerings for the purposes of this rite. Water and incense should be seen as both an offering and a ritual tool for the functioning of the rite.

4 bowls (to pour offerings of water, beer, wine, and milk into)

Bouquet of flowers/1 flower

Music playing device

Broom

Place four red candles before the icons.

Face the icon and recite, “Rejoice, O Netjer of this temple, for a perfect offering, complete in word and in substance, is accomplished in accordance with what has been done before.”

Light the first red candle and recite, “The torch comes to your Ka, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, and the torch comes to your Ka, O Osiris Imperishable Stars, you spirits of the Outlaw Dead. There comes he who promises the night after the day; there comes the two sisters from Ra; there comes she who was manifested in Ombos, for I cause it to come, even that Eye of Heru which was foretold to you, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis.”

Light the second red candle and recite, “The Eye of Heru is your protection, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries. Truly your adversaries are fallen.”

Light the third red candle and recite, “To your Ka, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen. To your Ka, O Imperishable Stars! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen.”

Light the fourth red candle and recite, “The Eye of Heru comes intact and shining like Ra in the horizon. May the four torches go in to your Ka, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis. May the four torches go in to your Ka, O Imperishable Stars. O you children of Heru-Imsety, Happy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef- as you spread your protection over your uncle Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, so spread your protection over these Imperishable Stars so that they might live with the Netjeru. To your Ka, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen. To your Ka, O Imperishable Stars! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen.

It is Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, who causes a torch to be bright for the potent Bas in Nekhen. May you make the living Ba of the Imperishable Stars strong with their torch so that they may not be repelled or driven off from the portals of the West. Then there will be brought to them offerings of things good and pure; you will send up thanks for this power, for the Imperishable Stars will be returned to their true shape, their true godlike form. Hear me, all of you, The Dead Unmourned, The Spirits Unvenerated, all you who has lived, has died, and wish to be reborn into the next life, or stay with the gods or with these spirits, you who is Pacified by the many offerings, who is made Pure by the many prayers, who is made Justified through this ritual.”

Present the offerings before the icons of Set and the Dead. Traditionally it should be seven offerings: bread, beer, “water from the inundation” (water you’ve blessed beforehand is a good modern interpretation of flood water from the Nile), wine, milk, incense, and cool water. It is acceptable to offer a regular meal or a votive offering if this is not possible, but incense and water should not be excluded. Offerings in multiples of 4 or especially 7 are best.

Recite, “An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives to those who are in the Duat and in the land of the dead, to the Great Ennead and the Small Ennead, to Sutekh the Lord of the Red Land, to the followers of Ra and the followers of Osiris, to those watchmen who protect their Lord, and to the attendants who are beside the bier of Osiris-Wennofer justified, that your Ba and your Ka may receive the offerings of food: bread, beer, water from the flood by which the netjeru live, wine, milk, incense and cool water. O excellent Bas of the West, and Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified, these offerings are for you.”

Extend your arms toward the icons, elbows bent and palms toward icons, and recite: “Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, great Netjer, lord of Ombos, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, the Outlaw Dead, if you are in Heaven, come to your Ba. If you are on earth, come to your shining spirit. If you are in the south, the north, the west or the east, come so that you may be content. Be strong in your body, so that you may come therefrom, you having become an incarnated Ba and a shining spirit, mighty as Ra and equipped as a Netjer. Come to this your bread, your beer, and your cool water so that you may become strong through every good and pure offering, Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, great Netjer, Lord of Ombos, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, the spirits of the Outlaw Dead.”

Set out three bowls before the icons. Recite, “Praising Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, great Netjer, lord of Ombos, and bringing the Bas of the transfigured Outlaw Dead to the ritual of the Festival of the Valley.”

Pour milk into one bowl, wine into another, and water into the third. Recite, “It is pure, it is pure, An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives. Accept this libation of the coolest water, wine and milk. O doorkeepers, lords of the Sacred Land, lords of burial, receive what is given to you and pull open the gates of the Duat. Open the gates of the West. Open the double doors of the silent region.”

Extend your arms toward the icons, elbows bent and palms toward icons, and recite: “Come forth, O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified. Come forth, you spirits of the Outlaw Dead, sacred to Seth-Typhon, God of Rebels. Awake! Turn yourself about, back toward life! O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified, raise yourself up. O Outlaw Dead, raise yourself up. Bring yourself to me. Arise and receive offerings from my hand. I will be a helper for you! May you emerge from the Earth and behold Ra. May you follow Amun in this, his beautiful festival of the desert valley.”

Light the incense and wave it slowly over the icons as you recite: “Crossing the river you see heaven, while the fragrance of incense is in front of you and you ferry across heaven adorned. As a transfigured and equipped spirit you are adorned most richly, and you eat bread and offerings in front of Ra, from the altars of Djehuty while your intelligence is given to you in the House of Intelligence and your heart in the House of the Heart and an offering is made for you and for your Ka and for your body. Your Ba is in heaven and your body is in the Duat, twice great and twice mighty. You wake up sound and intact in heaven and in your resting place, sustained by the deathlessness and ferocity of the Lord of Dread. You are nourished by the rain from his storms, you are protected from the horrors of the afterlife by his mighty arm. Take the name of Sutekh, who judges the honor of thieves, you spirits of the Outlaw Dead, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified.”

Continue censing the icons and recite: “O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, great Netjer, lord of Ombos, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, heaven is open for you. Earth is open for you. The ways of your resting place are open for you, so that you may go out and come in with Ra, so that you may walk freely like the Lord of Eternity. May you receive bread from what is offered on the altar of the Bas of Iunu, your food being like that of the Great Ennead. May you accept offerings from what is put out for you, pure bread on the altar of Heru, so that your flesh becomes alive and your muscles flourishing, so that you may be clear-sighted on your dark way. Hapy will give you water; Nepty will give you bread; Hathor will give you beer; and Hesyt will give you milk. You cleanse your feet in a basin of silver and turquoise, with a cloth from the hands of Tayet. You drink water from the shore of the Nile, and offerings are given to you beside Sutekh. A seat is prepared for you, and you assume the form of a Netjer. You alight at every place according to your desire, like the Great God in Ombos. Your Ba goes to heaven and your body rests in the Duat.”

Light a white candle in front of each icon, one for Set and one for each of the Outlaw Dead (when venerating them all at once, it is best to use 14 candles if possible, or one for each of the factions you are working with. If not, one candle collectively is acceptable.) Recite: “When you are justified in your resting place, you raise your face to the heaven of Ra and you see Heru in his steersman. A luminous disk is made for you in your resting place, in front of your image so that it may light up for you the darkness in the Duat, so that it may shine as Shu on your head. A boat is placed in front of you. The two sisters glorify you and Djehuty spreads out for you his writing equipment so that you may become divine like the Netjeru. He leads you through the mysterious gates, and when you pass by ‘He-who-protects-the-dead’, Ra comes to you and gives you his brightness. His rays flood through your eyes while the arms of Tatenen are prepared to receive you. Those in the West rejoice greatly. All plans against you are abolished. They are abolished.

You receive illumination from the disk of Ra, being placed beside Ra in his barque in the Room of Awakening. He opens your face. He illumines your seat so that you may be like Deba-of-the-One-Joined-Together. Sepulchral meals are presented to your Ka beside Sutekh and Heru. You receive justification from those who preside over your resting place, and your Ba lives for ever and for ever. Your seat is established and your name flourishes even like that of the Great Noble in Djedu.

Raise yourself up so that you may feel joy again; and your Ba is alive for ever like sah in the womb of Nut. Ihy leads you across the stream, he brings you to the sanctuary of the forgotten Dead. May your beautiful face be content for you have received your bread and you have inhaled the scent of the incense- they shall be pure for your Ka, Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, lord of Ombos, in heaven, on earth, on your seat in the House of Reconciliation.”

Set out a separate bowl for libations from the previous three. With each of the seven declarations “to you belongs water”, pour a bit of water into the bowl, for a total of seven different pourings. Recite:

“To you belongs water,” and pour;

“To you belongs water, O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified,” and pour;

“to you belongs water,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of millions of millions,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of millions of nemset jars and a hundred thousands of meker jars,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of the Great River from the waters of Heru in the region of Heliopolis,” and pour;

“to you belongs water from the beginning of infinity to the end of eternity, O He Before the Sky Trembles, Lord of the Oasis, Great of Strength, O lord of infinity, king of the Desert, sovereign, ruler of Upper Egypt, O Protector of Ra, great God of Rebels, in heaven, on the frontier and in the dark places, great being of the first generation, beautiful of face, third of the five Netjeru; heir of infinity for whom the time has come; beneficent Ba among every Ba and every outlaw, excellent of heart, who has defeated A/pep, enduring for ever and for all eternity.” and pour.

Take the offering of water/sacred water and elevate them four times before their icon as you recite: “May Water be given to the noble Ka who rests in the eternal residence of Shu in Iunu, and in Mennefer. Your horizon is in the Castle of the Prince. The bas foremost in Iunu come to you. They present Ma’at to you as an offering every day. Your father Shu and your mother Tefnut come to you bearing nemset jars of turquoise, filled with water the color of faience, their content being pure water…”

Sprinkle sacred water in a circle around the images the first time and recite, “…and they give you this water which you desire, your body being received into their hands while your forebears and those who have begotten and given birth to you come to you; they loosen the bonds of your funeral wrappings daily like those of the Great Noble.”

Sprinkle sacred water around the images the second time and recite, “…Hapy comes to you from his cavern. He moistens the fertile land for you. The Netjeru of the First Time come to you every day, carrying offerings for you. Aset and Nebet-Het come to you; they raise you up into the horizon. The lord of the Duat comes to you, accompanied by his retinue, his female mourners preceding him. Equipped with the spells of Aset and Nebet-het, the Great Mourner, they unite your limbs. Djehuty reads the Book of the Opening of the Mouth for you, while Heru, your sem-priest, pronounces magic spells for you, Seshat opens for the House of Life. Aset and Nebet-Het make you divine, and Hu and Sia adore you.”

Sprinkle sacred water around the icons for the third time and recite, “Ptah prepares for you a burial cloth with his hands, with the garments of Tayet. He washes your body and he purifies you. Then Shu and Tefnut reanimate you with their hands with milk of Hesat, and water is poured for you in front of the excellent Bas. They say to you, ‘Stand up, because your heart lives and we have fashioned your flesh.’ They make your heart healthy. They place you into the earth and they protect you. They protect you. They receive their spirit in your resting place like that of Tatenen, the great Netjer.”

Sprinkle sacred water around the icons for the fourth time and recite: “Heru comes to you, having assumed the white crown, with the red crown shining upon his head. Aset rejoices at his sight, her son, a spirit who comes forth justified and who established Ma’at in her place, near the beauty of Nut. Water is given for you, O noble spirit, so that the heart of your spirit rejoices. Give water to this noble spirit when his Ba comes to see him. Rejoice, O Great Noble, for Heru is given his office; he comes forth justified from the ‘Hall of the Two Truths’, he comes forth triumphant.

Decree for the majesty of Ishtar, O luminous Queen of Heaven, consort of Sutekh, issued by her royal family, the holy Igigi: “We shall tell your brother Osiris of your mighty deeds so that he may hear what you have accomplished and praise you on account of your victories. May you remember all of your good deeds.”

Taking the part of Ishtar, recite: “O stormy Bull of Heaven, I have made for you your house with my qadishtu. I have tethered your severed thigh to the sky, where it has become your Sickle-Sword. Heaven rejoices, while my minister Ninshubur convinces the Igigi to appease my sister Ereshkigal. Your effigy is holy and the “Mansion of the Prince” bears your mystery. You are Šarru in the northern sky while I am Irnini as your protectress.”

Pour a libation for Set and recite: “Oh Sutekh, may you receive water from my hands, for I am your lover Ishtar. O Lord of the Desert, may every joy be with you. I have healed for you your love of Ma’at, and I have placed your Ba in the horizon. I have brought your blessed souls, the Outlaw Dead, into the Netjeru’s protection; O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified.”

Pour another libation for Set and recite: “Receive for yourself this libation from your bride, in accordance with what you desire. I am your sister-in-arms. I am a daughter and Eye of Ra. I have caused your beautiful face to see. O my good lord, say what I should do in front of you so that I may assist these transfigured souls to their sanctuary, your Oasis. I have presented to you offerings consisting of barley cakes; they will last forever and forever. I have assembled for you the world into one single city and they make for you the ‘linen of one day.” I have caused you to rise upon the throne in Upper Egypt; I have caused you to rest in your palace. I have caused that your images appear in every land while you are in the horizon of Ra, your boat remaining beside his boat. Your statues appear in the temples while the Netjeru are with you as an Ennead; the divine lord of every temple offers to you even his own temple throne. I have placed the sky under your Ba and the Duat under your effigy. Every region has your statues, they being pure, while they praise you, Sutekh, Lord of the Outlaw Dead. You are rejuvenated for ever and over, O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified.

You are rejuvenated, O Seth-Typhon, you are rejuvenated in heaven. You appear in the eastern horizon of the sky, having spent days and passed hours, and you come in accordance with the proper time every year, and you rise as the moon at the time of the festival of illuminations. Your name endures in the ‘Mansion of the Prince’ and you come as Hapy to cover the fertile lands, so that all the world may live through your Ka. Your phallus is strong and you repeat your forms of yesterday. You are rejuvenated for ever and ever, O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified, O Spirits of the Outlaw Dead.”

Standing before the offerings and libations already given, hold your arms outstretched with palm facing up and open, pointing toward the table of offerings. Recite, “An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives. O Sutekh, I have poured for you, water which comes our from Elephantine and milk from Athribis. I have brought to you nemset jars full of fresh offerings from the estate of Ra so that you may receive that which Tatenen was given and loaves from what is offered. I have done this so that your Ba is able to come out to worship your god, there being no one who can turn you out from heaven or from earth. Your ba lives and your limbs flourish. You are rejuvenated as the ruler of ‘the rebellious ones’. You are great and you are elevated in Ombos and your seat is noble in Upper Egypt. A libation of cool water is poured for you consisting of the best liquid on the offering table in the middle of the mound of Tjeme. Rejoice, for you have joined gladness in the noble ished tree and your Ba is divinized in the realm of the dead. Receive for yourself offerings of every kind, and rejoice for you have joined Manu. Your father Shu praises you, O Sutekh, Lord of the Oasis, great Netjer, lord of Ombos.

Sutekh of Sepermeru who is in the Northern Sky, Seth-Typhon, Lord of Inebriation, the Red Lord, Osiris the beloved one, ruler of eternity, Imsety, Hapi, Duamutef, Qebehsenuf, Netjeru who are in the mound of Tjeme, Nejeru who are in the mansion of Sokar, Netjeru who are in the Mansion of Gold, Netjeru who are in the Great Place, great and noble bull, Great Ogdoad, oldest of the very primeval times, Osiris, Heru, Sutekh, Aset and Nebet-Het, enneads and divine bodies: may you receive, may your Ba receive and may your ka receive offerings and provisions -bread, beer, wine, milk, and water from the flood by which the Netjeru live.”

Pour a libation and recite, “Accept the Eye of Heru, I offer to you the water which is in it, fresh water as love and praise for Osiris, the Imperishable Stars justified, the spirits of the Outlaw Dead.”

Pour a libation of fresh water and recite: “Sutekh, accept this, your libation. Your libation belongs to you through in your name of ‘Storm Bringer’. Accept this vital fluid which comes from you and which Heru restores to you. The Eye of Heru is given to you, for the children of Heru recognize you as divine. The sky is given to you in your name of Champion of Ra and your enemies are fallen beneath in your name of Netjer; Heru recognizes you as ‘the Rejuvenated Ones’. Rejuvenate! Rejuvenate in your name ‘Rejuvenated Waters’. The waters exist as the strength of Sutekh. He is great, he is noble, he is strong, he is free and he is powerful through this living water. He has encircles for himself and he has given to himself, pervading each and every land. Sutekh, you are great and you are noble. You are strong and you are free through this libation of life-giving water.”

Pour a second libation of water. Recite: “Osiris, Heru, Sutekh, Aset and Nebet-Het, enneads and divine bodies, accept the Eye of Heru; I offer the water which is in it, fresh water as of love and praise.”

Pour a third libation of water. Recite: “O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, you spirits of the Outlaw Dead, may you receive a libation of fresh water after the Netjer becomes satisfied, each and every day. May you live and may your ba live both now and forever!”

Place flowers, or a flower, before the icons of the Dead. Recite four times: “Khonsu causes Amun to be your protection as you live eternally. May Amun fulfill what you desire, O beloved one. May you be a favored one, and may Amun favor you for all your good deeds. May he favor you and love you. May he perpetuate you and overthrow your adversaries whether dead or alive.”

Recite twice: “May you and your ba live both now and forever!”

Play music for the Outlaw Dead, and recite: “O you spirits of the Outlaw Dead, I am your descendant, I am your friend. Sutekh protects you from all harm, Fenrir Wolf patrols the boundaries, the Imperishable Stars who are like Netjeru feed and clothe and organize you. You are in the city of Ombos, you are in the House of Reconciliation, you are in the Oasis. This is the sanctuary for foreigners and immigrants, rebels, lost souls, for those who died unknown or unmourned, for those who were killed in the name of the law or of decency, for the freedom fighters and deserting soldiers; for the heretics and sex workers and persecuted queer folk; for the sick, disabled or mad, for the poor and starving; for the victims of empires and white supremacist capitalism, for the victims of racism and genocide. If you would cause harm to any of these spirits, you are abolished! You are defeated! Seth-Typhon himself hates and destroys you! The enemies of your descendants are fallen! Truly, they are defeated by your living friends and by Seth-Typhon, in the name of your descendants! Your descendants will live free. Your descendants will not be martyred. Seth-Typhon himself hates and destroys your descendant’s enemies! They are defeated! They are defeated!

To all others, no harm will come to your spirit in this place. Rest and feast and be adored, then move on as you will, or stay and adopt the ways and laws of the Outlaw Dead: to each according to their need, from each according to their ability; nothing is true, all is permitted; and so long as you harm only those who must be harmed, do what thou wilt is the whole of the law. We address you with love, gratitude, honor and solidarity from the land of the living!”

“We ask that you keep watch over us, your friends and allies, as our own ancestors. You protect and watch over secondgenerationimmigrant, who made a donation in your name to migrant rescue. Secondgenerationimmigrant, Ally of the Outlaw Dead, is a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.

You protect and watch over nephilemofthewoods, who made a donation in your name to the LGBTQ Freedom Fund. Nephilemofthewoodsis, Ally of the Outlaw Dead, a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.

You protect and watch over any59, who made a donation in your name to the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project. Any59, Ally of the Outlaw Dead, a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.

You protect and watch over shandamarie, who made a donation in your name to the National Bail Out Fund. Shandamarie Ally of the Outlaw Dead, a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.”

If you have any requests to make of the dead or any magic to perform, this is where you perform it.

When you are done, begin extinguishing the candles one by one as you recite: “This is the Eye of Heru by which you have become great, by which you live, and by which you have power, O Sutekh. This is the Eye of Heru which you consume and through which you enchant your body. The Wedjat Eye now enters into the West, into Manu, but it shall return. Truly, the Eye of Heru returns in peace!”

Sweep the area around the icons and recite: “The distress that causes confusion has been driven away, and all the Netjeru are in harmony. I have given Heru his Eye, I have placed the Wedjat Eye in the correct position. I have given Sutekh his testicles, so that the two Lords are content through the work of my hands. I know the sky, I know the earth; I know Heru, I know Sutekh. Heru is appeased with His Eyes, and Sutekh is appeased with His Testicles. I am Djehuty, who reconciles the Netjeru, who makes offerings in their correct form.”

Set aside the broom and bow toward the icon. Recite: “Djehuty has come. He has filled the Eye of Heru; He has restored the Testicles of Sutekh. No evil shall enter this temple. Ptah has closed the door, Djehuty has set it fast. The door is closed; the door is set fast with the bolt.”

Bow once again, and then left the offerings before the icons and recite: “O Sutekh, every adversary withdraws or you. Heru has turned himself to his Eye in its name of ‘Reversion-of-Offerings’. I am Djehuty. I come to perform this rite for Osiris. These, your divine offerings revert, they revert to your servants for life, for stability, for health and for joy! O that the Eye of Heru may flourish for you eternally!”

Take the offerings away from the icons. The ceremony is complete. A suggested traditional toast for the reverted meal: “For your Ka! Drink the good intoxicating drink, celebrate a beautiful day!”

Beautiful Feast of the Western Valley

This is a (slight) adaptation of the ritual rubric in Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World by Richard J. Reidy, posted in anticipation of a group ancestor veneration ritual we’re doing on the 28th.

(Traditionally to be performed on the day of the New Moon.)

Required Materials

Icon of Osiris

Icon of the akhu

Lighter/matches

Incense + incense holder

Four red candles

2 white candles 

Offerings: traditionally, bread, beer, “water from the inundation” (water you’ve blessed beforehand is a good modern interpretation of flood water from the Nile), wine, milk, incense, and cool water. Bread, beer, wine, and milk can be replaced with another offering or with votive offerings for the purposes of this rite. Water and incense should be seen as both an offering and a ritual tool for the functioning of the rite.

4 bowls (to pour offerings of water, beer, wine, and milk into)

Bouquet of flowers/1 flower

Broom

Prepare blessed water “from the flood”.

Place four red candles before the icons.

Face the icon and recite, “Rejoice, O Netjer of this temple, for a perfect offering, complete in word and in substance, is accomplished in accordance with what has been done before.”

Light the first red candle and recite, “The torch comes to your Ka, O Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, and the torch comes to your Ka, O Osiris Imperishable Stars. There comes he who promises the night after the day; there comes the two sisters from Ra; there comes she who was manifested in Abdju, for I cause it to come, even that Eye of Heru which was foretold to you, O Osirs, Foremost of the Westerners.”

Light the second red candle and recite, “The Eye of Heru is your protection, O Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries. Truly your adversaries are fallen.”

Light the third red candle and recite, “To your Ka, O Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen. To your Ka, O Imperishable Stars! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen.”

Light the fourth red candle and recite, “The Eye of Heru comes intact and shining like Ra in the horizon. May the four torches go in to your Ka, O Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners. May the four torches go in to your Ka, O Imperishable Stars. O you children of Heru-Imsety, Happy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef- as you spread your protection over your father Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, so spread your protection over these Imperishable Stars so that they might live with the Netjeru. To your Ka, O Osiris, Foremost of Westerners! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen. To your Ka, O Imperishable Stars! The Eye of Heru is your protection. It spreads its protection over you; it defeats all your adversaries for you. Truly your adversaries are fallen.

It is Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, who causes a torch to be bright for the potent Bas in Nekhen. May you make the living Ba of the Imperishable Stars strong with their torch so that they may not be repelled or driven off from the portals of the West. Then there will be brought to them offerings of things good and pure; you will send up thanks for this power, for the Imperishable Stars will be returned to their true shape, their true godlike form.”

Present the offerings before the icons of Osiris and the Dead. Traditionally it should be seven offerings: bread, beer, “water from the inundation” (water you’ve blessed beforehand is a good modern interpretation of flood water from the Nile), wine, milk, incense, and cool water. It is acceptable to offer a regular meal or a votive offering if this is not possible, but incense and water should not be excluded. Offerings in multiples of 4 or especially 7 are best.

Recite, “An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives to those who are in the Duat, to the Great Ennead and the Small Ennead, to the followers of Ra and the followers of Osiris, to those watchmen who protect their Lord, and to the attendants who are beside the bier of Ausir-Wennofer justified, that your Ba and your Ka may receive the offerings of food: bread, beer, water from the flood by which the netjeru live, wine, milk, incense and cool water. O excellent Bas of the West, and Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified, these offerings are for you.”

Extend your arms toward the icons, elbows bent and palms toward icons, and recite: “O Osiris, chief of the Westerners, great Netjer, lord of Abdju, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, if you are in Heaven, come to your Ba. If you are on earth, come to your shining spirit. If you are in the south, the north, the west or the east, come so that you may be content. Be strong in your body, so tht you may come therefrom, you having become an incarnated Ba and a shining spirit, mighty as Ra and equipped as a Netjer. Come to this your bread, your beer, and your cool water so that you may become strong through every good and pure offering, O Osiris, chief of the Westerners, great Netjer, Lord of Abdju, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified.”

Set out three bowls before the icons. Recite, “Praising Osiris, chief of the Westerners, great Netjer, lord of Abdju, and bringing the Bas of the transfigured spirits to the ritual of the Festival of the Valley.”

Pour milk into one bowl, wine into another, and water into the third. Recite, “It is pure, it is pure, An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives. Accept this libation of the coolest water, wine and milk. O doorkeepers, lords of the Sacred Land, lords of burial, receive what is given to you and pull open the gates of the Duat. Open the gates of the West. Open the double doors of the silent region.”

Extend your arms toward the icons, elbows bent and palms toward icons, and recite: “Come forth, O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified. Awake! Turn yourself about, back toward life! O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified, raise yourself up. Bring yourself to me. Arise and receive offerings from my hand. I will be a helper for you! May you emerge from the Earth and behold Ra. May you follow Amun in this, his beautiful festival of the desert valley.”

Light the incense and wave it slowly over the icons as you recite: “Crossing the river you see heaven, while the fragrance of incense is in front of you and you ferry across heaven adorned. As a transfigured and equipped spirit you are adorned most richly, and you eat bread and offerings in front of Ra, from the altars of Djehuty while your intelligence is given to you in the House of Intelligence and your heart in the House of the Heart and an offering is made for you and for your Ka and for your body. Your Ba is in heaven and your body is in the Duat, twice great and twice mighty. You wake up sound and intact in heaven and in your resting place, Osiris, chief of the Westerners, beneficent one, who was no failure in his deeds, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified.”

Continue censing the icons and recite: “O Osiris chief of the Westerners, great Netjer, lord of Abdju, Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, heaven is open for you. Earth is open for you. The ways of your resting place are open for you, so that you may go out and come in with Ra, so that you may walk freely like the Lord of Eternity. May you receive bread from what is offered on the altar of the Bas of Iunu, your food being like that of the Great Ennead. May you accept offerings from what is put out for you, pure bread on the altar of Heru, so that your flesh becomes alive and your muscles flourishing, so that you may be clear-sighted on your dark way. Happy will give you water; Nepty will give you bread; Hathor will give you beer; and Hesyt will give you milk. You cleanse your feet in a basin of silver and turquoise, with a cloth from the hands of Tayet. You drink water from the shore of the Nile, and offerings are given to you beside Osiris. A seat is prepared for you, and you assume the form of a Netjer. You alight at every plae according to your desire, like the Great Noble in Djedu. Your Ba goes to heaven and your body rests in the Duat.”

Light a white candle in front of each icon, one for Osiris and one for the akhu. Recite: “When you are justified in your resting place, you raise your face to the heaven of Ra and you see Heru in his steersman. A luminous disk is made for you in your resting place, in front of your image so that it may light up for you the darkness in the Duat, so that it may shine as Shu on your head. A boat is placed in front of you. The two sisters florify you and Djehuty spreads out for you his writing equipment so that you may become divine like the Netjeru. He leads you through the mysterious gates, and when you pass by ‘He-who-protects-the-dead’, Ra comes to you and gives you his brightness. His rays flood through your eyes while the arms of Tatenen are prepared to receive you. Those in the West rejoice greatly. All plans against you are abolished. They are abolished.

You receive illumination from the disk of Ra, being placed beside Ra in his barque in the Room of Awakening. He opens your face. He illumines your seat so that you may be like Deba-of-the-One-Joined-Togethr. Sepulchral meals are presented to your Ka beside Osiris-Wennofer. You receive justification from those who preside over your resting place, and your Ba lives for ever and for ever. Your seat is established and your name flourishes even like that of the Great Noble in Djedu.

Raise yourself up so that you may feel joy again; and your Ba is alive for ever like sah in the womb of Nut. Aset transforms herself into a bier. She receives you as a couch while your son Heru, his arms carrying the crown of justification, adorns your head. May your beautiful face be content for you have received your bread and you have inhaled the scent of the incense- they shall be pure for your Ka, O Osiris chief of the Westerners, lord of Abdju, in heaven, on earth, on your seat in Upper Kemet or on your seat in lower Kemet.”

Set out a separate bowl for libations from the previous four. With each of the seven declarations “to you belongs water”, pour a bit of water into the bowl, for a total of seven different pourings. Recite:

“To you belongs water,” and pour;

“To you belongs water, O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified,” and pour;

“to you belongs water,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of millions of millions,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of millions of nemset jars and a hundred thousands of meker jars,” and pour;

“to you belongs water of the Great River from the waters of Heru in the region of Heliopolis,” and pour;

“to you belongs water from the beginning of infinity to the end of eternity, O possessor of honors, chief of the Westerners, who awakens intact, O lord of infinity, king of the Two Lands, sovereign, ruler of eternity, O lord of the cool water, great one of the two sources, in heaven, in his resting place an din his tomb, great being of the first generation, beautiful of face, first of the five Netjeru; heir of infinity for whom the time has come; beneficent Ba among every Ba and every tomb-chapel, excellent of heart, who has fixed the two uraei on his head, enduring for ever and for all eternity.” and pour.

Take the offering of water/sacred water and elevate them four times before their icon as you recite: “May Water be given to the noble Ka who rests in the eternal residence of Shu in Iunu, and in Mennefer. Your horizon is in the Castle of the Prince. The bas foremost in Iunu come to you. They present Ma’at to you as an offering every day. Your father Shu and your mother Tefnut come to you bearing nemset jars of turquoise, filled with water the color of faience, their content being pure water…”

Sprinkle sacred water in a circle around the images the first time and recite, “…and they give you this water which you desire, your body being received into their hands while your forebears and those who have begotten and given birth to you come to you; they loosen the bonds of your funeral wrappings daily like those of the Great Noble.:

Sprinkle sacred water around the images the second time and recite, “…Hapy comes to you from his cavern. He moistens the fertile land for you. The Netjeru of the First Time come to you every day, carrying offerings for you. Aset and Nebet-Het come to you; they raise you up into the horizon. The lord of the Duat comes to you, accompanied by his retinue, his female mourners preceding him. Equipped with the spells of Aset and Nebet-het, the Great Mourner, they unite your limbs. Djehuty reads the Book of the Opening of the Mouth for you, while Heru, your sem-priest, pronounces magic spells for you, Seshat opens for the House of Life. Aset and Nebet-Het make you divine, and Hu and Sia adore you.”

Sprinkle sacred water around the icons for the third time and recite, “Ptah prepares for you a burial cloth with his hands, with the garments of Tayet. He washes your body and he purifies you. Then Shu and Tefnut reanimate you with their hands with milk of Hesat, and water is poured for you in front of the excellent Bas. They say to you, ‘Stand up, because your heart lives and we have fashioned your flesh.’ They make your heart healthy. They place you into the earth and they protect you. They protect you. They receive their spirit in your resting place like that of Tatenen, the great Netjer.”

Sprinkle sacred water around the icons for the fourth time and recite: “Heru comes to you, having assumed the white crown, with the red crown shining upon his head. Aset rejoices at his sight, her son, an Akh who comes forth justified and who established Ma’at in her place, near the beauty of Nut. Water is given for you, O noble Akh, so that the heart of your Akh rejoices. Give water to this noble Akh when his Ba comes to see him. Rejoice, O Great Noble, for Heru is given his office; he comes forth justified from the ‘Hall of the Two Truths’, he comes forth triumphant.

Decree for the majesty of Aset, issued by the Netjeru: ‘We shall not stand between you and your brother Osiris so that he may hear what you have said and praise you on account of what we have done. May you remember all of our good deeds.”

Taking the part of Aset, recite: “I have made for you your house with my sister Nebet-Het. I have caused you to enter the ‘left Eye’ and become the moon. Heaven rejoices, while Djehuty, protector of the moon, fills the Wedjat Eye in the Great mansion. Your effigy is holy and the ‘Mansion of the Prince’ bears your mystery. You are Sah in the southern sky while I am Sopdet as your protectress.”

Pour a libation for Osiris and recite: “Oh Osiris, may you receive water from my hands, for I am your sister Aset. O lord of the Netjeru, may every joy be with you. I have healed for you your son Heru and I have placed your Ba in the horizon. I have established for you your son on your seat of eternity; O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified.”

Pour another libation for Osiris and recite: “Receive for yourself this libation from your sister, in accordance with what you desire. I am your sister. I am your wife. I am the daughter of your mother. I have caused your beautiful face to see. O my good lord, say what I should do in front of you so that I may please your heart through it. I have placed your son Heru upon your seat. I have done it because of your love for your father Geb. May your protection be in the Mysterious Place for I know your excellent form. I have presented to you offerings consisting of barley cakes; they will last forever and forever. I have assembled for you the world into one single city and they make for you the ‘linen of one day’. I have caused you to rise upon the throne; I have caused you to rest in your palace. I have caused that your images appear in every land while you are in the horizon of Ra, your boat remaining beside his boat. Your statues appear in the temples while the Netjeru are with you as an Ennead; the divine lord of every temple offers to you even his own temple throne. I have placed the sky under your Ba and the Duat under your effigy. Every region has your statues, they being pure, while they praise you, Osiris Wennofer justified. You are rejuvenated for ever and over, O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified.

You are rejuvenated, O Osiris, you are rejuvenated in heaven. You appear in the eastern horizon of the sky, having spent days and passed hours, and you come in accordance with the proper time every year, and you rise as the moon at the time of the festival of illuminations. Your name endures in the ‘Mansion of the Prince’ and you come as Hapy to cover the fertile lands, so that all the world may live through your Ka. Your phallus is strong and you repeat your forms of yesterday. Aset safeguards you and protects you as lord of the uraeus, O Osiris Wennofer justified. You are rejuvenated for ever and ever, O Osiris Imperishable Stars, justified.”

Standing before the offerings and libations already given, hold your arms outstreateched with palm facing up and open, pointing toward the table of offerings. Recite, “An-Offering-Which-The-King-Gives. O Osiris, I have poured for you, water which comes our from Elephantine and milk from Athribis. I have brought to you nemset jars full of fresh offerings from the estate of Ra so that you may receive that which Tatenen was given and loaves from what is offered. I have done this so that your Ba is able to come out to worship your god, there being no one who can turn you out from heaven or from earth. Your ba lives and your limbs flourish. You are rejuvenated as the ruler of ‘the living ones’. You are great and you are elevated in Djedu and your seat is noble in To-Wer. A libation of cool water is poured for you consisting of the best liquid on the offering table in the middle of the mound of Tjeme. Rejoice, for you have joined gladness in the noble ished tree and your Ba is divinized in the realm of the dead. Receive for yourself offerings of every kind, and rejoice for you have joined Manu. Your father Shu praises you, O Osiris, chief of the Westerners, great Netjer, lord of Abdju.

Osiris of Coptos who is first in the Mansion of Gold, Osiris-Sokar, Osiris, lord of Djedu, Wennofer, Osiris the beloved one, ruler of eternity, Imsety, Hapi, Duamutef, Qebehsenuf, Netjeru who are in the mound of Tjeme, Nejeru who are in the mansion of Sokar, Netjeru who are in the Mansion of Gold, Netjeru who are in the Great Place, great and noble bull, Great Ogdoad, oldest of the very primeval times, Osiris, Heru, Sutekh, Aset and Nebet-Het, enneads and divine bodies: may you receive, may your Ba receive and may your ka receive offerings and provisions -bread, beer, wine, milk, and water from the flood by which the Netjeru live.”

Pour a libation and recite, “Accept the Eye of Heru, I offer to you the water which is in it, fresh water as love and praise for Osiris, the Imperishable Stars justified.”

Pour a libation of fresh water and recite: “Sokar-Osiris, accept this, your libation. Your libation belongs to you through in your name of ‘Fresh Water’. Accept this vital fluid which comes from you and which Heru restores to you. The Eye of Heru is given to you, for the children of Heru recognize you as divine. The sky is given to you in your name of Ra and your enemies are fallen beneath in your name of Netjer; Heru recognizes you as ‘the Rejuvenated Ones’. Rejuvenate! Rejuvenate in your name ‘Rejuvenated Waters’. The waters exist as the strength of Osiris. He is great, he is noble, he is strong, he is free and he is powerful through this living water. He has encircles for himself and he has given to himself, pervading each and every land. Sokar-Osiris, you are great and you are noble. You are strong and you are free through this libation of life-giving water.”

Pour a second libation of water. Recite: “Osiris, Heru, Sutekh, Aset and Nebet-Het, enneads and divine bodies, accept the Eye of Heru; I offer the water which is in it, fresh water as of love and praise.”

Pour a third libation of water. Recite: “O Osiris Imperishable Stars justified, may you receive a libation of fresh water after the Netjer becomes satisfied, each and every day. May you live and may your ba live both now and forever!”

Place flowers, or a flower, before the icons of the akhu. Recite four times: “Khonsu causes Amun to be your protection as you live eternally. May Amun fulfill what you desire, O beloved one. May you be a favored one, and may Amun favor you for all your good deeds. May he favor you and love you. May he perpetuate you and overthrow your adversaries whether dead or alive.”

Recite twice: “May you and your ba live both now and forever!”

“We ask that you keep watch over us, your friends and allies, as our own ancestors. You protect and watch over Devil’s Lettuce, who made a donation in your name to the Dakhleh Oasis Project. Devil’s Lettuce, Ally of the Akhu of the Duat, is a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.

We ask that you keep watch over us, your friends and allies, as our own ancestors. You protect and watch over secondgenerationimmigrant, who made a donation in your name to the Dakhleh Oasis Project. Secondgenerationimmigrant, Ally of the Akhu of the Duat, is a friend to you and you are a friend to them; if you are strong, they are strong. Your spirit lives in them and they honor your spirit and descendants.”

If you have any requests to make of the dead or any magic to perform, this is where you perform it.

When you are done, begin extinguishing the candles one by one as you recite: “This is the Eye of Heru by which you have become great, by which you live, and by which you have power, O Osiris. This is the Eye of Heru which you consume and through which you enchant your body. The Wedjat Eye now enters into the West, into Manu, but it shall return. Truly, the Eye of Heru returns in peace!”

Sweep the area around the icons and recite: “The distress that causes confusion has been driven away, and all the Netjeru are in harmony. I have given Heru his Eye, I have placed the Wedjat Eye in the correct position. I have given Sutekh his testicles, so that the two Lords are content through the work of my hands. I know the sky, I know the earth; I know Heru, I know Sutekh. Heru is appeased with His Eyes, and Sutekh is appeased with His Testicles. I am Djehuty, who reconciles the Netjeru, who makes offerings in their correct form.”

Set aside the broom and bow toward the icon. Recite: “Djehuty has come. He has filled the Eye of Heru; He has restored the Testicles of Sutekh. No evil shall enter this temple. Ptah has closed the door, Djehuty has set it fast. The door is closed; the door is set fast with the bolt.”

Bow once again, and then left the offerings before the icons and recite: “O Osiris, every adversary withdraws or you. Heru has turned himself to his Eye in its name of ‘Reversion-of-Offerings’. I am Djehuty. I come to perform this rite for Osiris. These, your divine offerings revert, they revert to your servants for life, for stability, for health and for joy! O that the Eye of Heru may flourish for you eternally!”

Take the offerings away from the icons. The ceremony is complete. A suggested traditional toast for the reverted meal: “For your Ka! Drink the good intoxicating drink, celebrate a beautiful day!”

KRT Revival: Ma’at and Isfet

The ancient Egyptians believed in a universe where the correct function and order of the interpersonal, the societal, and the cosmic were all as intertwined as they were vital to continued existence. In the moment that existence was created and perfect order was established, Zep Tepi or the First Time, the rightful king of Kemet crowned by the NTRW ruled over all of creation, and the people did not rebel against him; the heavens and the Earth were pristine and stable in their functions and beauty; children loved their parents and their parents loved their children; the priests made the proper offerings and did the proper rituals to propitiate the NTRW and help to keep the cosmos in alignment. All of the interdependent parts of our universe worked together in peace and harmony. This idealized state of being is what is maintained, protected, and endlessly sought after by the practice of serving and living within ma’at, and each new day is a new chance to bring this perfect state of being back into existence (or as close to it as possible, anyways) by doing what is right and helpful (ma’at), and by shunning -or at times, destroying- what is wrong and harmful (isfet). The gods, humanity, and all the universe is nourished by Ma’at.

Ma’at is often loosely translated to “truth, justice, and order”, but those English words do not carry the connotations of ma’at, nor do our modern minds intuitively understand the social and cultural context in which the concept existed, and therefore what the ancient Egyptians meant by it. In order to understand the term ma’at, a newbie kemetic has a lot of studying to do. Broadly speaking, the main tenets of ma’at include:

Humility. From the poorest peasants to the pharaoh himself, it’s of vital importance to be humble. This humility manifests itself by people in positions of authority being merciful and not ordering around their inferiors or otherwise being high-handed; by not getting angry and snapping back at someone who’s insulted you, or otherwise seeking revenge when you’ve been wronged; or by children and students listening to and obeying their parents, elders or teachers. The goal of humility is to see everyone as an individual worthy of respect (“all people regardless of rank have equal worth” is actually an ideal you find in a lot of the literature on ma’at, despite the historical reality of Kemet as a highly stratified society), and to treat those around you with gentleness and restraint.

““If you are powerful in causing respect for you,
by knowledge, by calming in speech,
do not order people, except by the guidelines.
The aggressive man ends up in trouble.
Do not have your heart too high, or it will be brought down.” – Instruction of Ptahhotep

“Then he addressed his son:
Do not be proud on account of your knowledge,
but discuss with the ignorant as with the wise.
The limits of art cannot be delivered;
there is no artist whose talent is fulfilled.
Fine words are more sought after than greenstone,
but can be found with the women at the grindstone.” –The Instruction of Ptahhotep

“If you are a leader
with broad scope in what is commanded to you,
you should do outstanding things,
so as to be remembered in days to come.
A (legal) case does not arise out of the midst of praises.
The hidden beast intrudes – and then there is resistance.” –The Instruction of Ptahhotep

“If you are to be a leader
be patient in your hearing when the petitioner speaks,
do not halt him until his belly is emptied
of what he had planned to have said.
The victim loves to sate his heart
even more than accomplishing what he came for –
if a petition is halted,
people say ‘but why did he break that rule?’.
Not everything for which he petitions can come to be,
but a good hearing is soothing for the heart.” –The Instruction of Ptahhotep

Moderation and self-control. It is absolutely vital to “rule (one’s) heart”; to be the master of one’s appetites, passions, and behavior. Not doing so leads to a slew of hated sins: greed and selfishness, loud and obnoxious behavior, and crimes of passion are the most often cited. With greed and anger or violence as some of the most particularly reviled manifestations of isfet, this moral was one of the most important to the people of Kemet. For example, the Instruction addressed to Kagemni reads: “When you sit with company, shun the food you like. Restraint of heart is (only) a brief moment! Gluttony is base and one points the finger at it. A cup of water quenches thirst, a mouthful of herbs strengthens the heart. A single good thing stands for goodness as a whole, a little something stands for much.”

Generosity. Across sources and time, one of the most common traits associated with being a good, upstanding Ma’atian citizen is being generous to those around you, and warnings against the sin of greed are almost as common as warnings against excess and anger; this was especially important for people with wealth and prestige of any kind. Aid to the vulnerable and oppressed was vital, and its importance cannot be overstated. For example, in The Instruction of King Amenemhet (a postmortem message addressed to the king’s son about his own assassination), the speaker declares: “I gave to the beggar, I raised the orphan, I gave success to the poor as to the wealthy”, and that “none hungered in my years, none thirsted in them” as evidence he was a righteous man who did not deserve the betrayal of his people his murder represents.

“If you wish your conduct to be good
and to save yourself from all evil,
resist the opportunity of greed.
It is a sore disease of the worm,
no advance can come of it.
It embroils fathers and mothers,
with mother’s brothers.
It entangles the wife and the man,
it is a levy of all evils,
a bundle of all hatefulness.
The man endures whose guideline is Right,
who proceeds according to his paces.
He can draw up a will by it.
There is no tomb for the greedy hearted.” –The Instruction of Ptahhotep

Live life to its fullest/honor your full potential. An often unremarked upon aspect of the Instructions, “wisdom texts” and afterlife/tomb boasts (which, being intended to serve as an eternal monument for the dead person who it refers to, guaranteeing that their good name will not die and they will live on in the afterlife) is that taking advantage of one’s years and doing good work while you’re alive is important. Many tombs spend most of their letters to the living talking about all of their accomplishments, although they usually end with reassurances that the dead was truthful, generous and altruistic. It’s as important to provide for yourself and be self-sufficient as it is to be generous to those in need whenever possible. Part of wisdom is being clever and skilled at your job and becoming useful and important to one’s community because of it. Arguably, the emphasis on this is because most of our records come from the aristocracy, where it makes more sense to measure one’s moral worth by their land, wealth, and number of slaves, as well as one’s high social standing with the king and other important figures. Still, there is enough written about doing well for oneself, enjoying the comforts of life, and being true to one’s desires that it merits being mentioned when speaking about the ideal, Ma’atian life.

 “Follow your heart as long as you live.
Do not make a loss on what is said,
do not subtract time from following the heart.
Harming its time is an offence to the ka.
Do not deflect the moment of every day
beyond establishing your heart.
As things happen, follow (your) heart.
There is no profit in things if it is stifled.” -The Instruction of Ptahhotep

“A man who worries all day long
will never be allowed a good moment.
A man who lazes all day long
will never have a solid house.
A shot filled is like an oar abandoned on the ground,
when another is taken,
his heart has obeyed the wish ‘if only I had’…”-The Instruction of Ptahhotep

Truthfulness/Good Heka. To be a Ma’atian person, you need to tell the truth. Often being mentioned in tandem with greed, officials committing fraud or giving false testimony is a common trope in Ancient Egyptian negative confessions and instructions for morality.

“This use of “grg” or lying and falsehood as a metaphor for disorder, injustice and wrong in general appears also in the Middle Kingdom text, the Book of Khunanpu. Here Khunanpu lists as one of the five basic characteristics of the Maatian ruler as “shtm gvg,” a destroyer of falsehood. And throughout his discourse on Maat, he defines falsehood as one of the cardinal evils which are corrosive and destructive of the moral order, i.e., Maat. Such falsehood violates the communicative ground as much as the failure to listen and respond actively and appropriately. As untruthfulness, then, falsehood is not simply deception but the presence of evil and disorder in the moral community. And as evil and disorder, it is a challenge to the moral order and thus must be driven out so that Maat can return to its place, as the texts teach.” –Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

There is a strong focus on how one speaks and conducts themselves, reflecting the idea that images and words have a great power both mundane and magical. Lots of literature on ma’at stresses the correct and wise ways to speak to people in various situations, stressing truth-telling, eloquence, and restraint in conversation. Notice how in this speaker’s description of his moral behavior, the emphasis is on what he did (and didn’t) say: “Greetings to you who will come after, Who will come into being in the future. I shall cause you to call me blessed! …I kept my mouth clean of harming one who harmed me, My patience, turned my enemies into my associates, I controlled my mouth and was skilled in responding, And I was not tolerant of evil….I did not give praise to one who flattered me…When I hated slander, loved agreement, A voice was raised for them to protect them from evil….” -Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

It should be noted that while “having good heka” is an important enough tenet of ma’at to get its own paragraph, in many ways “good heka” is not a moral end in itself, but the practical way in which ones’ inner morality manifests in ones’ relationships and life in general.

Reciprocity. This doesn’t just mean the reciprocity between individuals and parts of society, or between humans and gods, but the basic idea that good should be, and inevitably will be paid back unto good by nature of the act, rather than being selectively rewarded to the pious by the gods. Being good will inherently make your life better and make more people like you, causing your reputation to be good and stand as a monument to you after you die -guaranteeing your immortality- as a natural, inevitable consequence of a life well lived.

“If you are weak, follow a man of excellence
and all your conduct will be good before god.
When you have known lesser men before,
do not be proud against him,
from what you knew of him before.
Respect him according to what he has become,
for goods do not come of their own accord.” –The Instruction of Ptahhotep

“And self-interest plays its part as natural companion of the virtues. For virtues are not “ideals” but basic needful endowments which nature built into the human constitution.” –Moral Values in Ancient Egypt, Miriam Lichtheim

Harmony with one’s family and society. A Ma’atian person is loyal to their parents, takes care of their wife and children, feeds the hungry, is competent at their job, and is a kind and trustworthy figure if they’re in any kind of position of authority. Lots of the advice about ma’at centers around avoiding conflicts or otherwise bothering people around you. There is also a common motif of “turning enemies into friends”. Being kind to and on good terms with one’s family members is also a ubiquitous theme.

“If you are excellent, found your household,
love your wife within reckoning.
Fill her belly, clother her back,
ointment is the remedy for her body.
Gladden her heart as long as you live.” –Instruction of Ptahhotep

“First of all one sees the importance of location in Maatian ethics, that is to day, the need to define oneself in terms of one’s community. Doing Maat, then, is always concrete and contextual. One acts in a definite community called my town or my province or district and in relation to the people in it. It is in such a context of family, town and province that one proves one’s worthiness or excellence (ikr) and attains the status of imjhw, an honored one. Certainly, the greatest proof of worthiness is being able to claim, as the treasurer Neferyu, does in his declaration of virtues, “My entire town is my witness”. Secondly, Maat is defined in terms of both speech and action with a constant and central dual stress in Maatian discourse.” –Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

Defeating or driving out isfet. The Egyptians saw the cosmos as an eternal conflict between these two ideals, and humans are supposed to pull our weight. Evil must be defeated and driven out so ma’at can reign; following ma’at requires that you do good to “replace” or “answer” evil: “However, on second look, one can read the virtue of answering evil with good another expression of the fundamental Maatian principle of replacing isfet with Maat or in its original form, “putting Maat in the place of isfet.” Thus, one does not give good to evil or as in Christianity, do good for evil. Rather one answers (wfb) responds to evil by doing a good, i.e., Maat, which replaces and destroys evil.” –Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

It is worth noting that although violence and acts of revenge are generally understood to be against ma’at in most contexts, engaging in violence against others who were seen as representations of isfet -generally, “rebels” such as criminals or foreign powers- was sometimes seen as a requirement of a ma’atian person, particularly the king. In Violence in the Service of Order, when discussing an incident where foreigners were ritually killed for crimes against a temple and therefore ma’at, Muhlestein writes: “One wonders whether both Nubians and Asiatics were really the perpetrators of the crimes against the temple. Perhaps as foreigners, and thus representatives of Isfet, they were chosen as a scapegoat for the cultic crimes that had happened at Tod. It is also possible that the real perpetrators were punished but were textually described as foreigners. While the answers to these questions are elusive, it is clear that the king engaged in impalement, decapitation, and burning, and that all or one of these punishments were enacted in a ritual setting. Moreover, while some of the account may be exaggerated, it also seems inevitable that such practices were part of Senusret I’s zeitgeist. Decapitating and burning rebellious enemies, as part of a sacrificial slaughter, was clearly part of the royal repertoire.”

Maintaining the cult of the NTRW. Part of humanity’s responsibility toward ma’at is to assist the gods in their magical workings to keep the universe here and functioning as well as it can through various ways of Giving Stuff To The Gods. I’ve dedicated the least amount of this piece to this aspect of ma’at not because it’s unimportant, but because the bulk of kemetic how-to information one can get online addresses this particular aspect of maintaining ma’at: what sort of offerings to give, which holidays to celebrate, how to do different rites, how to understand the mythologies and associations of the gods, things like that. In antiquity there were a plethora of different cult centers in different cities performing different, interdependent and yet symbiotic rituals and myth re-enactments on a micro scale; today, there are a plethora of different paths that pay tribute to the NTRW and even more ways to worship and offer to them. I will leave it to the reader and whichever NTR they are working with to shake out the finer details of this part of ma’at, since there is so much more extensive writing on this topic than I could shake a stick at in a WordPress post.

Ma’at is a principle that strives to maintain balance and harmony on the greater cosmic scale, in our society and communities on Earth, in our family and friendships, and in our own hearts. It is a moral concept that requires us to treat one another with compassion and dignity, because we understand that in Ma’at, all people are fundamentally equally deserving of love and kindness. We are encouraged to think before we speak, to be levelheaded and make our decisions based on what will be best for everybody rather than out of pride, a desire for revenge, or a selfish dedication to our own vices over the needs of others:

“The key point of this discussion, then, is that the practice of Maat is conceived and carried out within the worldview which links the Divine, the natural and the social. These three domains are interrelated, interactive and mutually affective. And a Maatian person understands this and acts accordingly, as the history of the idea of Maat, which is presented below, demonstrates. As Assmann contends, Maat is an “einheitstiftende Idee,” a unity creating idea, which unites God, society, nature and universe. […] Ethically this has meaning in that it becomes a task of king and members of society to uphold this Maat-grounded world, which is essentially good, and to restore and recreate it constantly. It is in this context that Maat expresses itself as an ongoing ethical project, a project which is the central focus of this work.”-Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

While researching this, I was grateful for the research I had been doing into funerary cults for various akhu-related projects, because it hammers in an important aspect of the teaching of ma’at: the goal is not just to live a good, long, full life on Earth, but also to guarantee one’s soul’s longevity in the next life. Despite what most Egyptology 101 stuff says, ancient Egyptians didn’t necessarily believe that one must be mummified in order to exist in the next world. It was equally important to be remembered for your good character and good behavior. There are two roads to immortality: following the principles of ma’at and doing good deeds, and having accomplishments in one’s career. The good deeds one does, the impact they leave on the world, and the positive memory of them in people’s hearts is a spiritual monument, serving the same purpose as grand tombs and mummification rituals for dead kings and aristocrats. This is another manifestation of the idea that Ma’at is a force that sustains all life, particularly divine life: “Moreover, in regards to Ra, “Maat serves as his nourishment; he lives by it, it is offered to him and it is also his daughter”. Maat, of course, is also nourishment for all the divinities as well as humans as the text quoted above states.” –Maat, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga

Speaking of which, it’s also worth noting that a not-inconsequential amount of advice in ancient Egyptian texts is addressed to the king, or instructing people to be obedient to the king. This is one of the ideas that have to be either dropped, or adapted greatly in order to be incorporated into the modern person’s mindset or sense of morality. I believe we can still incorporate lessons about the king -both in how a good king, and one’s responsibility to the king- into our kingless lives by understanding the function of kingship as the prototype of how to be a moral and effective person in a position of power or leadership, and creating harmony in your interpersonal relationships and community by doing so. Everybody is, ultimately, the “king” of their own lives, and we are all responsible for doing the same things the king was supposed to do, but in a micro sense.

I have to admit that I’ve always felt sort of alienated by some of the ancient Egyptian ideas of the kind of person considered to be good, and to have lived a good life. There’s a sort of “just world” assumption that if one is a good, generous, and peace-loving person, they will obviously live a good life and be on good terms with their community as natural cause and effect…but in reality, sometimes you don’t have to do anything wrong to be ousted by one’s loved ones and become the black sheep. Still, ancient wisdom in the texts about upholding ma’at through pro-social behavior is starkly represented in our kemetic circles today: you can study nonstop, you can have tons of great ideas, you can lay all the groundwork you want, but at the end of the day, you can only have a kemetic community by getting a bunch of us together who actually like each other, and want to build the same sort of future for us and our faith.

Either way, there’s no denying that there are many acts and ideas associated with ma’at from antiquity that make me uncomfortable, and that always bring up the question of how closely I need to base my sense of morality off of the ancient Egyptian’s ideas. Some ideas, like Reputation-As-Morality or the tradition of sacral kingship, can be adapted or interpreted into my worldview. Some, like the constant demonization of the Other as an ideological enemy, are things I believe ought to be left in the past. It’s obvious that trying to recreate the ancient Egyptian moral and religious mindset can only ever go as far as learning how to more accurately LARP as an ancient Egyptian scribe, but that doesn’t mean we should assume we automatically know better than them, either. Which parts of our cultural understanding of ourselves and the world might be thrown out as superstitious and unenlightened nonsense if people a thousand years in the future focus only on our current American xenophobia, authoritarianism, and caste system of the racist police and prison industrial complex? The ancient Egyptians had wisdom to teach us, and if we just throw out everything they believed that doesn’t immediately sound right to our modern consciences, we may end up missing out on the legitimate wisdom of the sages because we simply don’t know how to listen. The right balance has to be struck between respecting tradition and making use of the ancient Egyptians’ perspective and understanding which things legitimately need to be left in the past; you would be hard-pressed to find a modern kemetic of even the most Purist Reconstructionist type claiming that worshipping one king as the human incarnation of Heru, for example.

Personally, the phrase that comes to mind most often when I try to distill the concept of ma’at down to its barest essentials, is “balance and harmony”. The emphasis in most acts described as “ma’at” is on acting in ways that are most likely to create healthy interdependent relationships between yourself and those around you, and more broadly, with the universe in general. TheTwistedRope wrote a good couple of posts (Ma’at as a System, Isfet as a System, A Proposed Model for Determining Ma’at vs. Isfet) on defining ma’at as a regenerative system, which can help apply the concept to things such as our industrialized society on a larger level, and I have written a post on how trying to keep Ma’at apolitical is both ahistorical and counterproductive to doing ma’at in a practical sense (The Case For Social Justice in Ma’at). Both of these pieces explore a different angle of “ma’at as harmony”. Trying to follow ma’at by making choices that will lead to harmony in my relationships, household, and life makes more intuitive sense to me than prioritizing “order” because although these two words are essentially synonyms, the connotations of “protecting order and justice” will always be of an authoritarian “order” enforced by the ruling powers (which, under TTR’s definition of “ma’at as a system”, would be a degenerative rather than a regenerative system), not a healthy and voluntary order that works for the well-being of all living things involved. When I look at how my actions affect the world around me in an economic and political sense, I conclude that being anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-capitalist is the most efficient way to contribute toward my society’s larger attempts to build a harmonious order that will provide human rights and dignity to everybody in it, as well as preserve the existence of the Earth and the life it sustains.

Understanding isfet as a concept is part of understanding ma’at, since these two concepts are understood as in constant battle, ebb and flow, with one another. Understanding isfet as a concept has always been a little complicated for me, since one of my primary deities is Set, the god of Chaos, and therefore making no distinction between chaos and isfet as concepts only muddies the water. In order to talk about how ma’at and isfet are reflected in my practice, I can’t really just stick to scholarly articles describing how the ancient Egyptians saw these concepts. I want to try to communicate to the reader the level of existential dread that isfet, and its icon A/p/e/p, truly represents in the kemetic mind (or at least, in mine).

When I picture isfet in my mind, it always has the same nickname: The God-Awful Nothing. Anyone who’s experienced a long period of clinical depression knows the feeling this short line of poetry refers to; the dark weeks and months when it seems like something has emptied your body of your thoughts, your desires, your dreams, your past, even your entire identity, all to make room for the heaviest emptiness in the universe to sit inside of you instead. It makes attaching joy or meaning to anything almost impossible, and that leeches motivation to do good things from you. Life is not a gift given to you by your ancestors, or an incomprehensible miracle that has allowed something as complex and beautiful as a human being to not just exist in the universe but to experience it; life has become an unfunny joke that the universe doesn’t realize no one is laughing at anymore, the thing allows us to exist only to suffer. Food isn’t an opportunity to enjoy yourself and add some flavor to your day, it’s just a chore to get through to avoid hunger pains. Why did you buy those books? Why did you set those goals? Why did you ever put effort into learning an instrument? What’s the point of any of it? There’s just nothing there anymore.

Why did you make plans with your friends this weekend, when the last three attempts just left you exhausted? You try to reach for the feeling of the relationship, your memories of your friends enjoying your company and you theirs, and you just come up with more nothing. You must’ve imagined the entire friendship, your every important relationship, out of sheer delusion, attempting to fill up the nothingness of loneliness in spite of their obvious contempt for you. You should cancel your pointless plans to do meaningless things with people who have become so distant to you, emotionally, that they may as well be on other planets. The nothingness whispers, and you listen, and one by one people stop checking up on you. The nothing was right, after all. You never really had friends in the first place.

Nothing really matters, so you start drinking too much. You stop going to work, or you barely trudge through your days. You don’t make any more attempts to draw or see movies you were once excited for or play video games you once loved. You spend more and more of your time in your bed, doing nothing, staring glassy-eyed at nothing, thinking and hoping and longing for nothing, nothing, nothing.

Depression is so devastating because it distorts one’s thinking so that everything in your life suddenly seems to be an empty shell with nothing beneath it, your relationships seem to crumble beneath your fingers (even when you in fact have a support system that is trying to help you all the time!), and your actions seem completely meaningless because you can’t emotionally feel its consequences or intent or the usual emotional and subconscious mishmash of symbolism in your actions, when your brain has so thoroughly convinced you that nothing can be good because nothing matters. Petting a dog? Who cares. Doing a good job at work? Who cares. Cutting off your friends? Who cares. Playing your favorite video game? Who cares. Seeing your family? Who cares. Hurting yourself? Who cares? In this way, the God-Awful Nothing, the emptiness that causes you to hurt yourself and others when suffering from something like depression is isfet.

However, the God-Awful Nothing is even more insidious on a wider, societal scale. I propose that, in the philosophy of overcoming A/pep, evil itself (including the wide-scale acts of evil and destruction such as war, genocide, oppression) is caused by a kind of “nonbeing” of the spirit. Most of the things we do that hurt others is out of thoughtlessness; not carelessness, but the decision -conscious or subconscious- not to reserve any time or effort to think about what we’re doing, or who we’re hurting, or why, or how the other person will feel. In this way, many acts of ignorance and bigotry that cause the most harm -especially when you consider that it’s generally an entire society acting like this- are just manifestations of people taking the path of least resistance. If you asked them why they’re doing it, they may not even realize they’re doing it at all. Pull back the curtain to see what’s behind the act, and you’ll find something even worse than malice: nothing. Just nothing. We hurt each other because we don’t have it in us to try not to.

When we do act maliciously, it’s usually because we haven’t given any thought to why we should have the right to hurt, whether it’s okay to hurt someone unnecessarily, or maybe we force ourselves not to think by telling ourselves thought-defying cliches like “this is just how the world is” or “people hurt me, so why shouldn’t I hurt others?” in order to ignore our consciences. Even saying “lack of empathy” doesn’t really cover it, because people with little to no empathy can act compassionately by choosing to think about these things, and people who pride themselves on their empathy often act in ways sorely lacking it towards those they consider “acceptable targets”. People become and remain bigots or toxic, self-centered people not because they necessarily are trying to be evil and malicious, but because the sad fact of the matter is that it just takes the least effort. In other words, so many of the most widespread and most insidious social phenomenon, are made up of the things that we end up doing when we aren’t trying to do anything at all. This idea was reflected by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together…. The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good… Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

I like this idea of isfet in particular because while it still holds a sufficient amount of horror at how easy it is for regular people to contribute to the force that degrades all goodness and life, it also inherently humanizes even people who I, personally, hate. If I understand that the times that I’ve been selfish or lost my temper were times when I wasn’t trying hard enough to do the right thing rather than an act of some alien, abstract, inhuman evil in me, then I understand that the same holds true for others, as well. It doesn’t inspire me to be so forgiving as to ignore evil being done, but it does require me to recognize that even the people I consider the most reprehensible are fundamentally human, and capable of change for the better. This is the reason I can ultimately ignore the philosophical implications of ma’at being opposed to “rebels” or “foreigners” that I discussed earlier. The paradigm of Ma’at Vs. Isfet is life-affirming in the sense that it starts from the basic assumption that the world is not fallen or sinful, but inherently good and worthy of life; that the problems and evil that the world does contain are aberrations and accidents, not some fatal irredeemable flaw in the universe’s contents or function. Ultimately, opposing isfet means understanding that the world and the people in it, for all our issues and chaos and brokenness, are still infinitely better than the alternative, and infinitely worth the effort of protecting, maintaining, and improving.

Isfet finds a foothold in our lives when we accept that it’s better not to make our own choices, consider other points of view, challenge our preconceptions, challenge ourselves to do better: first by thinking and speaking, and then by acting. It is literally caused by a lack of the vital moral spark that causes us to devote ourselves to defending and maintaining Ma’at. Our mission as kemetics to assist the gods in opposing A/p/e/p is often described as “making sure the world keeps existing”, and that’s true; however, we ought to remember that the existence of the entire universe is the gods’ responsibility. Our responsibility is the continuing existence of humanity– not just in the literal sense that we need to make good decisions to make sure our species is able to stay alive, but that our job is to preserve our sense of humanity as intelligent, thinking beings that care about each other. We must preserve the understanding that our actions have the capacity to gain us immortality because of how they affect those around us, and that our duty as human beings is to treat everyone as an equal, with dignity and care, especially when they are vulnerable and in need. Just as the gods defeat the monstrous manifestation of nonbeing in the form of A/p/e/p by defeating i/t in battle each and every night, so must we defeat the metaphorical manifestation of nonbeing within ourselves in the form of not giving a shit by being excellent to ourselves, the Earth, the gods, and one another, each and every day.

Setian Justice

I originally wrote this post months ago, before quarantine had begun, and back when the idea of a mass popular uprising in the U.S. against the police seemed like a distant pipe dream. It was just a philosophical debate back then, but as the months have gone by and I’ve procrastinated finishing and posting this due to a series of chaotic circumstances caused directly by the pandemic (and by my community’s political leaders choosing to ignore it in favor of protecting profit and “law and order” in the streets), I’ve come to realize I’m remiss in my responsibilities if I continue to sit on this post.

Alternatively titled: A Response to ‘Horian Peace‘

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I used to be friends with the author of the above post, until I had to cut him off when I realized I could no longer continue to make exceptions to my integrity because I enjoy the person’s company and advice. I don’t want to start shit with him, or bring him any negative attention for this post, but I am taking the risk -effectively further estranging someone who I genuinely believe doesn’t deserve to be #cancelled, because the views he eloquently expressed in this post are very, very common in both the kemetic and larger pagan community. I believe that it is one of the biggest obstacles we face as a community, that it’s at least partially responsible for the widespread racism in white pagan spaces, and I believe that it is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” kind of ideology -one that too many genuinely kind and intelligent people subscribe to, because it’s so benign and seems so helpful at first glance. I would be remiss in my responsibilities both as a follower of Set and as a political activist in general (for all you losers and haters out there: yes, I also attend protests and do political volunteer work in my real life, with my physical body; no, I will not send you evidence to prove it, thereby risking my safety or political goals for internet clout) if I didn’t address the threat this mindset presents to us, and if I’m going to choose any person or any post to represent this mindset, I’d rather it be someone who deserves the clicks, generally speaking. I’m formatting this post as a response to his post, but it’s really directed at any kemetics who share his opinions in general. I have seen only a handful of kemetics siding with “law and order” with regards to the protests and riots demanding justice for George Floyd (and all other Black Americans whose lives are forfeit according to this great holy nation we call America), and I’m hoping this post will prevent me from seeing very many more.

The post I linked above was liked and shared by several kemetics, on WP and tumblr, with whom I’ve had certain amounts of disagreements with about politics -which is my polite way of saying I think they’re bigoted dipshits who functionally oppose Ma’at while claiming to uphold it. You’ll notice the difference in tone between how I talk about said dipshits and how I talk about the Horian I’m actually responding to, and that’s intentional; enabling and emboldening bigots is not quite as bad as being a bigot yourself.

But it is almost as bad, because without people who are willing to do just that, bigots and fascists would be revealed immediately for the paper tigers that they are. But nice, normal people like my Horian ex-friend, people who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who just want to survive and be left in peace, who want crops without plowing up the ground and rain without thunder and lightning -I don’t doubt their good intentions. My fiancee (son of Tyr, and the guy nice enough to help edit this post even though he’s a Heathen redditor with no idea who or what the hell I am talking about. I love you man thanks again ❤ Note from editor: when I asked if kemetics would know who Tyr was or what “Heathen” meant I was swiftly informed that I have “Norse privilege”. Make of that you will.) often reminds me that I should assume people are stupid instead of evil 9 times out of 10. This is usually good advice, but I don’t think y’all are stupid or evil (most of you, anyways). I don’t think you’re “fluffy and naive” either. I think you’re willfully ignorant; I think you’re acting in self-serving ways while pretending to be martyrs about it; I think there’s a strong possibility that you’re a coward; and honestly, I think that you’ve been lied to your whole lives about what good and evil is. In kemetic terms, I think that you’ve mistaken the peace we defend from isfet for the refusal to pick up arms against isfet.

Horus himself recently told me “words are [my] wand” (which is his polite way of saying “watch your mouth or I’ll watch it for you”); and he’s not wrong. I don’t want to continue my bad habit of lashing out in anger when the right thing to do is stay my hand. However, ever since COVID-19 hit, and the news is full of stories of the death and destruction caused by our government’s incompetence and greed, as well as laying bare the absolute brutality and class warfare at the core of America’s police and justice system; as I realized that both the malice of the powerful, and the complacency of our society in general, were to blame for what is happening to our home, I realized this is something that is worth the fight. (Editor’s note: At time of notation, the death toll is 20+ and 11,000+ people have been arrested.) And now that I see most of the nation’s biggest cities have reached the flashpoint some part of me has expected all my life, I realized that it’s my responsibility to remind my fellow kemetics that our hearts will be judged by Anubis’s scales one day, and if you choose to side with the rich and powerful over the poor, sick, and suffering, that decision is likely to weigh heavy on your heart from now until the day you die.

Now, to bring this back to the original conversation the post is referring to: Shezep is arguing, in a nutshell, that it is better to make compromises with those that hate us -at the time, he was referring to Donald Trump supporters and TERFs- in hopes that our kindness to them will eventually convince them to see us as human beings, and treat us with the respect we are due. He decried the amount of arguing and fighting going on in the community about political differences, and claimed it was because “he knows what happens when peace fails” and that, at the end of the day, it was better to, well…turn the other cheek.

If the arguments in Shezep’s post were being used in response to any kind of violent, or even socially disruptive but peaceful, demonstrations against Kemetic/Pagan bigotry, I would be inclined to take them more seriously (even if I would still argue against them). But this is how people (including him) in the Kemetic community talk about online arguments, a lot of them more in the tone of one of the more heated debates one might hear in a college class or a professional setting, about how we should address these community issues -or rather, if we should be addressing them at all. Tell me this: if just arguing online is an unacceptably cruel and “chaotic” way to fight racism and transphobia in our communities, how in the goddamn fuck are we supposed to fight it?

If you honestly consider the risk of a flame war to be too great to justify telling a TERF to go fuck themselves as an act of solidarity towards all trans/nonbinary kemetics, you need to quit acting like you’re motivated by a desire to protect the community. You are motivated by a desire to remain comfortable and keep your hands clean, and it’s obvious to everyone who hasn’t bought into either American conservatism, or this stupid Kumbaya bullshit that American Democrats delude themselves into believing counts as “being on the right side of history”. History is written by the victors, and I didn’t see very much victory on our side until people accepted the necessity of Setian justice. The George Floyd protests and riots have achieved the following: a 75% budget cut to the LAPD, The Minneapolis city council is pushing for complete abolition of the MPD and the NYPD has had to suspend personal days off for its officers, forcing them to work 7 days a week and 12 hours shifts. These are the first of many victories to come in the next weeks and months.

So no, trying to befriend and politely explain to bigots why bigotry is bad is not a feasible plan. No matter how charming and awesome at debating you are, you will never convince enough of these people to change their minds, to even slightly reduce the threat they post to the marginalized members of our community. The only thing you are doing is setting the precedent, in the minds of the victims and the victimizer, that keeping the peace with the bully is more important than protecting the bullied. You cannot beat a bigot by agreeing to play their game by their rules:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

― Jean-Paul Sartre

The reason this Horian’s words have gotten under my skin so much that I’ve been thinking about this post for so long after he posted it, is that I used to be friends with some truly awful, violent people and their children; people I couldn’t safely come out to, people who’d beaten me up before, people who’d done all varieties of morally unacceptable shit, up to and including joining Nazi Skinhead gangs in prison (and then grooming their children into the same cult of hate and ignorance). I usually don’t talk about it online -not out of white guilt, but because people honest to God accuse me of making it up for attention when I talk about it publicly. I genuinely cared, and still care, about some of them, despite that; and sometimes I was able to change their minds about stuff by talking to them. It’s possible, but it takes a lot of time; I would need to be talking to someone about this for months at least to make any kind of leeway with your typical obnoxious conservative, much less convince an ex-Proud Boy to start being proud of voting blue. (Not that the ones I talked to were in that particular Hitler fan club, to my knowledge, but the joke doesn’t work otherwise.) In my religious life, I’m a friend and ally to the spirits known as the Outlaw Dead, and “outlaws” include people I, personally, find reprehensible (although I do make and enforce rules declaring any hate groups or war criminals persona not grata in my practice). I understand, far better than most people assume I do, the value of loving your enemy, of forgiveness, of sometimes pursuing the “hearts and minds” strategy, of pursuing nonviolent methods whenever feasible. (For example, the National Guard in Atalanta Georgia used peaceful crowd control methods, by playing music and dancing with the protesters. This not only protected the protesters 1st amendment rights, but kept the situation peaceful as anyone trying to start a fight would be extremely obvious in that situation.)

The thing is, “winning hearts and minds” makes for a great soundbite, but it simply isn’t a strategy that could realistically be used to make the kind of changes we need in our community; not to mention that it can be actually dangerous for people to put themselves in that position. It turned out to be a pretty bad strategy for socialists in 1939 Germany, for example. Especially considering you’re not a member of all the marginalized groups you’re encouraging to take this strategy, it is completely out of line to tell them, “No, we shouldn’t be mean to your oppressors; we just need to spend weeks, months, and years making them a regular part of our lives until we form a strong enough interpersonal relationship with people who hate us, that they’ll choose our friendship over the hate they’ve made a part of their identity for most of their lives”. Even if it was guaranteed to get results (which it usually does not!), that is a lot of work, time, and resources for a relatively small amount of enemies turned to possible allies. But actually standing up and making yourself a problem for the oppressors (Editors note: It also happens to be way more fun, in case anyone’s keeping score.)? Well, then the bastards are willing to negotiate. It wasn’t until police precincts were set on fire and the police had to face mobs of angry, unemployed, scared citizens with nothing to lose that they started to realize the tear gas and riot gear can’t subdue the mob forever, and they would have to make an actual effort to do their job without randomly beating and killing anyone they can get away with beating and killing. Part of the reason the Minneapolis city council is even considering police abolition is because rioters burned down the 3rd precinct. They also forced the officers to evacuate under a hail water bottles, trash and stones. The thin blue line dissolved the second citizens stood up, the same way the divine right of kings dissolved when people stopped believing in it.

I would also like to bring your attention to a famous poem about societies being taken in by fascism:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” The man who wrote this poem was a Catholic priest who got sent to a death camp, because rather than using his influence to oppose the tyrant, the Pope was doing everything in his power to appease Hitler and his followers.

Sometimes you don’t have control over your life, particularly when you’re a kid as I was, or an “essential worker” or laid off worker in America during June 2020, and sometimes you have to look the other way to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. However, that attitude (as well as blinding faith in authority and in the illusion that we are at the end of history) allowed to run amok results in the people giving up all their political power and passively allowing the rise of poor leadership that makes selfish and arrogant decisions. When that goes on for too long, you get a nation unequipped and unwilling to do what’s necessary to combat a plague, and then unequipped to do anything but surrender when half a city becomes a mob. Setian justice is being served as I type this, across the nation; I suppose I should feel vindicated, and in some ways I do. But…goddamn, man, what a mess. What an absolute waste. What a tragedy that it took this many deaths and this much blood and this many buildings burned in order to get justice for George, for Black America, for all of us who the government has condemned to die for the sake of “the economy”. If we had made it more of a problem a few years ago -general strikes, letter writing campaigns, outlawing hate symbols, refusing to compromise any of our public spaces to a death cult that believes in America over science and White Jesus over compassion….if we had refused to compromise earlier, this blood may never have been shed.

Politics starts with culture, and if we want to avoid remaining complacent (and therefore culpable) in these manifestations of isfet in our communities, we have to first look at how we talk about these issues. Online, where all you have to do is press a button to get someone away from you, we have a responsibility to stand up for our principles, even when it makes people uncomfortable or jeopardizes our social capital in our religious groups. If we don’t, they are not principles, but lies we tell ourselves to pretend we’re good people. Trying to encourage people to be wise and merciful in how they fight, to use the required force and no more, to allow our enemies quarter and defend their human rights as well as our own if it comes down to that, to encourage compromise itself; these calls to caution and moderation, to wise and compassionate action in conflict, are not the same thing as calls for no action at all -especially when action is sorely, sorely needed. Don’t think we don’t notice who you consistently choose to defend with your cries for “peace”, and don’t imagine that the bigots don’t notice either. As bitter as it is to be in the situation where “I’ve spent more time around violent racists and fascists than you have” is a helpful card to play, I am, in fact, playing that card: I was raised by and among these people. I know how they think and act, and I know that your “Horian Peace” theory isn’t just “naive” -it is disgracefully negligent.

Look, if I could do this shit as a child in real life dealing with dangerous adults, we as a community can do this shit now, as adults in internet conversations with other adults. If you legitimately cannot do that, you really should just keep your mouth shut, because you’re more likely to hurt the cause than help it. I agree with the premise that peace must be defended whenever possible. I disagree with your definition of peace, and I disagree with the sacrifices you’re willing to make in order to defend it. In fact, I believe that your actions, words, and attitudes on the matter are more likely to lead to more frequent and escalated conflicts, because you’re not defending a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, but a negative peace, which is the absence of tension. You don’t want to accept the new normal, any more than the cops who are currently getting their last acts of brutality in while they still can, before whatever reforms coming into effect in order to keep the people from burning the nation to the ground.

And on a personal note, the condescending tone of this post pisses me off at least as much as the content. My childhood was defined (and not in a good way!) by my father’s choice to join the military, in anger, fear, and ignorance, after 9/11; my adolescence was defined by the fallout of that decision; my entire life and the lives of everyone of my generation has been defined by the wartime culture of post-9/11 paranoia, racist hate, the horrific soil that grew the seeds of America’s current neo-fascist phase; the same soil that gave us the President that got rid of the pandemic response plan created by the last guy out of pettiness and spite; that didn’t shut down the country soon enough or long enough despite being repeatedly warned what would happen; the pre/sident whose leadership is currently costing literally hundreds of thousands of lives. The same pre/sident whose supporters the Horian who made the original post had been chastising everyone for not tolerating in our spaces because we wanted our spaces to be safe for all Kemetics except the ones who’ve made an identity around excluding and humiliating others for being different.

You’re not special for “knowing what happens when peace fails”; anyone can just look outside and see it. Peace has already failed. You are risking nothing -not even an argument, not even a couple moments of awkward discomfort- and decrying the “brutality” of people who choose to risk our reputations, comfort, mental health, and sometimes real-life financial livelihoods and safety so that we can say no, actually, you can’t be racist or transphobic and be a good kemetic, much less a good person. Trying to make sure bigots are uncomfortable in our spaces is not “dehumanizing them”; it’s taking them at their word about what they want to do to other human beings. It’s doing the bare minimum to act compassionately to their targets. Another great MLKJ quote is, “Hate cannot defeat hate; only love can do that”. But we cannot focus on the love required of us toward bigots to the exclusion of the love required of us toward their targets, and that is what sanctimonious, irresponsible comments on these matters do.

To those who still think this way: How dare you condescend to lecture us about “what happens when peace has failed”? How dare you live in a self-serving fantasy to protect your ego from the fact that your inaction has consequences, and then go write self-righteous posts blaming those consequences on the victims of the pandemic and of evil, tyrannical leadership? And as for Shezep, how dare you claim that all this is “Horian” when Horus is the champion of justice, vengeance against wrongdoers, and violently opposing threats to himself and his people, to Kemet, to Order, to Ma’at? You sound like the “Setians” who are openly and proudly xenophobic -and no wonder, since whenever one of us mean SJW Setians argues with the racist ones, you and your group of “both sides are always valid” enablers are some of the loudest voices siding with the racist version of Setianism, and the racist version of Kemeticism.

The kemetic community does not exist in a vacuum, and if you’re going to talk about this like it’s a real armed conflict, you need to take into account the larger political context of these conversations. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of being a human being that sometimes, at pivotal points in history, you must choose between peace and justice. We have the dubious honor of being alive in one such period; possibly the most important one yet, due to the climate emergency and the unlikelihood of our world’s nations taking it as seriously as it needs to be taken. I don’t like it either, but right now, we literally cannot have both peace and justice. We have to choose, and while I genuinely hope this post doesn’t hurt you too much, I also hope you at least regret that you’ve lost at least one friend over this…because you have made the wrong choice. I ask that, if you can, you believe me when I say I’m singling you out because I would rather give your blog a platform on mine than any other kemetic I’ve seen making these arguments. Also, I wouldn’t write long bitchy opinions responding to your opinions if I didn’t see value what you have to say; you argued your point eloquently, and that’s why it merited a genuine response. I hope you and yours are doing well. May we all survive these catastrophes, and all others to come.

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We’re gonna commandeer the local airwaves
To tell the neighbors what’s going on
And they will shake their heads

And wag their bony fingers
In all the wrong directions

And by daybreak we’ll be gone

I’m gonna get myself in fighting trim
Scope out every angle of unfair advantage
I’m gonna bribe the officials; I’m gonna kill all the judges
It’s gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage