Blessedly, I’m on afternoon shifts for prac this week, so I decided to move at a slightly slower pace in the mornings and allow myself to engage in some much-needed meditation in spiritual preparation for Wep Ronpet, the ancient Egyptian New Year. It’s a challenge to be here, there, and everywhere but it helps to remember we live in a world where anything is possible —…
This is my third Christmas as a Kemetic. While not a vastly long time, it’s been long enough for me to learn a thing or two about how I want to celebrate the holiday season. Rather than abandoning the mainstream, I’ve opted to create my own Kemetic Christmas holiday. Each year, I experiment with different ways of adapting themes and concepts from ancient Egyptian religion and introducing…
After Wep Ronpet this year, I decided to make my first Kemetic New Year’s resolution. The origin of New Year’s resolutions are not credited to the ancient Egyptians but to the Babylonians and later, the Romans. It may be reasonable to infer that people in ancient Egypt had plenty of down-time to reflect on the previous year, while most of their kingdom was flooded by the annual…
During Wep Ronpet this year, my part of the world is in the grip of another La Niña rain event. Surrounded by the element of water, I’m choosing to honour the circumstances in which I find myself and relating these events to the attributes of Hapi, god of the Nile river and of the inundation (Akhet), which used to occur in ancient times. It’s very much a time…
Just wanting to provide a personal update about where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to lately, as I’ve not been posting as much as I used to. Essentially, it’s been work and uni, work and uni. Until I finish my degree, I cannot fully function in the capacity of a Kemetic scribe, as I would like to. I realise that now. The whole ‘I can…
In a moment of utter amazement, I whispered “Mary is Isis and Jesus Christ is Osiris and Horus. The nativity scenes are one scene, repeated through time.” In my last post, I discussed setting up a Kemetic-themed Christmas tree for the second year running, and how I was quite content with the results. In that post, I also mentioned that when touching the ornaments and making…
While not an authentic ancient Egyptian custom obviously, last year I honoured my own vision and set up a Kemetic Christmas tree. The little tree was an experiment, just to see what it would look like, how it would feel, and what the reaction of the netjeru would be. I was really happy with the results. The netjeru, who have an unlimited capacity for graciousness it seems,…
Wep Ronpet, the ancient Egyptian New Year, falls on a variable day each year from late July to early August. It occurs when the star Sirius (known as spdt or Sopdet ) first rises in Cairo and once coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile river. This celestial event is called the heliacal rising of Sirius and continues to be observed today as the Kemetic New…
Is it possible to have a Kemetic Christmas tree? That is, one with any merit in Kemetic neo-pagan culture. Would the concept of the Kemetic Christmas tree have any valid connections to ancient Egypt, its customs and religion? Or would it be a mere construct based on the wishful thinking and creativity of the practitioner? On the other hand, if we cannot avoid the blending and merging of cultures,…
Whether or not Kemetic neo-pagans celebrate Christmas may seem like a complicated topic but it really doesn’t need to be. Most practitioners — myself included — are notoriously practical people who incorporate ancient Egyptian religion and spirituality into everyday modern life. From this perspective, I’d like to think we have the best of both worlds. That is, the blessings and favour of the ancient Egyptian deities /…