So for a number of reasons, I'm rejigging this blog from one mostly for posting devotional poetry into one that's more of a sideblog for my website, persebek.org. There are reasons why I shifted from a wordpress site to a neocities site, but it felt like the right thing to do. But instead of having a blog on there, I thought I'd just reuse this one, and keep this for posting updates about the site itself, as well as more meandering blog entries and thoughts that don't really fit on the website itself.
If you're looking for the website itself, persebek.org is the link. I'm aiming to focus on putting new works up on there, but there's also some older content that I'm putting up because I want it on my current site where it's easy to find.
You can also find the old wordpress site archived at persebek.wordpress.com, and there's a decade's worth of posts, hymns, rites, and other things in there.
Ask box is also open in case you want to ask any questions.
Because of recent tumblr shenanigans, I'm moving my blog for Per Sebek off here and over to Dreamwidth and Pillowfort. You can find and follow them there. I'll also be posting updates to bluesky, posting the links to the entries. Everything will be posted publicly, so you shouldn't need an account to read them. I hope to see some of you over there!
I'll be crossposting all my old posts from here to there for the time being, but once that's done, I'll be posting some new content. I have a post planned talking about Sobek expressed through each of the seven classical planets that I want to write, amongst other things. So keep an eye out for that.
I'll write more on these when I'm not quite so tired, but I wanted to at least post the videos of the three shrines I took tonight. I need to do the Kuan Yin and healing shrines as well, but they require more work than I have the energy for tonight.
It's here! We've reached the new year! It's Wep Ronpet! :D I've just finished all the Temple rituals we do this time of year. I've been locked in for like the past 9 hours lmao. But it's fun and lovely to spend so much time with my family and celebrate the new year together. <3
Here's a public version of the Oracle of Aset for this coming year 33. This year's god is Ra-Heruakhety, and I'm very excited to continue getting to know Ra in all His forms and how He connects up to Sobek in new and interesting ways. :D
New Year's Blessings of the Netjeru to you all! <3
This is something I used to do on the old Wordpress blog, and since Wep Ronpet is coming up, it felt like time to do this again. Today is the last day of the year, IV Shomu 30, and I've spent the day cleaning my shrines and redoing them for the Epagomenal days. This is the time I usually strip off my main Kemetic shrine of it's altar cloths, so I can have a clean slate, and then redecorate for the colour/s of the year once Wep Ronpet's over.
I have five shrines at the moment, and this is going to document them all. I like doing this, as it's a good way to get a sense of where my practice is and how my path looks as I go into the new year. A lot's been going on this year, and adding two new pieces of furniture and getting rid of one has made my room work a lot better and closer to how I want it to work. There's still work to do on getting a new bed and mattress, but that's not really shrine stuff, so that's another thing entirely.
The first shrine I have is on my desk, and it's for Quan Yin. I've been working with Her for many, many years, on and off, and I felt called to make Her a space this time when I was redoing my room. So now She has a place by my desk. Sometimes I wish my practice was more consistent with Her, but it is what it is, and I always enjoy the time when I have the energy for practice. It feels good ot have a proper space for Her that I can use. I do want to be able to do water offerings there at some point, but I don't have the right stuff for that atm. But anyway, enjoy a short video of the shrine as it was before I cleaned it.
This is what the shrine looks like now. I changed up the altar cloth, and I added Ganesha at the back.
The second shrine I have is the healing/self-care shrine I have by my door. This one is mainly for Sekhmet, but I also have representatives of Hetheru, Hermes, and Sobek on there too, and Masrai, a goddess from an ancient Egyptian AU that I made ages ago. She's the one holding the red spear. That's Her proper symbol, and She picked out that statue specifically to represent Herself. This is the shrine where I keep my meds, and to help sacralise that aspect of my life.
Here's a short video about how it looked before I cleaned it, followed by a picture of the shrine now. It hasn't changed much, tbh, but it's still nice to see it anyway.
Next we have Aset-Hekate's shrine, a little space in the corner for Her to have. It's a bit impractible at this point, but it's still usable. Would I have wanted Her to have this space specifically? Well, no, but my space is limited and this is where there is space. I wanted Her to have Her own space particularly so I can do more classical planetary magic work there where I invoke the more classical planetary gods rather than my Kemetic ones. Plus I just like having Her there, and giving Aset-Hekate a proper space.
Here's a video of the shrine before I redid it, and also a pic of the shrine now. It's changed a bit in redoing it, but that's okay. I think it looks a bit better this way tbh.
Now we get to the Kemetic planetary magic altar. Okay, sure, I have Baphomet there as Saturn, but I don't have any proper Kemetic statues of a bull/goat-headed god, so. Baphomet is it. Unless you want to be That Guy and be like, well, it's just Banebdjedet that counts right? And that's fine with me lol. But fr tho, He is just my Saturn Guy, and maybe one day I will get a bull-headed god to stand in His place, but for now, it is Baphomet my beloved. <3 I do probably need to tweak some of the other gods as well, but I'm still in a process of working out which set of gods I want to work with, so it's what it is for now. It's there in a gods-are-squishy-and-that's-ra-if-you-squint kinda way lol.
It's a pretty simple altar, but it does the job. I'm in the process of trying to decide what altar cloth/s I want to use on it in the new year. I liked the starry one I had before, but I'm in the mood for a change, but I don't know what that change looks like yet. So we'll see. I'll spend some time looking at altar cloths and tapestries to see if I can find the right vibe. I'm sure something will come to me when I know the god/s of the year and what the colours are. I might want to tap into that.
As with the others, here's a lil video of the shrine before I cleaned it, and here's a pic of it afterwards.
The last shrine I have is my Senut shrine. I used to call my main shrine the Shedety shrine, when I was deep in the weeds with Sobek Shedety, but now that I've been working with Sobek-Ra instead, the shrine name has changed. It's now the Shrine of the Emanations of Sobek-Ra the Midnight Sun. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it does reflect the central mystery work of this shrine, which is Sobek-Ra-Wesir the Midnight Sun. I'm still deciding how I want to set this one up, so it might change from the layout pictured, but it's not a bad one for now.
Here's a small video of the shrine before cleaning, and a pic of it now.
And that's the state of the shrines for another year. We bid farewell to the year of Sobek-Ra, and eagerly await the year to come. Di Wep Ronpet Nofret and many blessings for the Days to come.
This is a very long response to some questions on a discord server I'm in, but this is so so long I'm going to post it here and link this instead. :D Plus it'll be here for anyone else to read if they so desire.
Enjoy!
What primary deity or spirit do you work with and why?
So I have two primary deities, Sobek and Aset-Hekate, but I just want to talk about Sobek for the moment, since you find far fewer devotees of Him than you do Aset-Hekate. But I can talk about Aset-Hekate later or at another time if folks are interested in that too.
Sobek is the true primary deity for me, He will always come first, but Aset-Hekate is my second. Between the two of Them, They guide my practice and path. I work with Sobek because He came to me and claimed me as His own, and 13 years ago, Sobek sent me to meet Hekate, and I've been working with Her ever since, as She is the other half of my path and practice. Some might work these as equals, but Sobek will always come first. I am His child first and foremost.
For those who don't know Sobek, He's the Egyptian crocodile god of fertility and kingship, amongst other things. The Sobek I work with is from the Faiyum, which is an oasis west of the Nile in the Delta area. The Faiyum is characterised by a large lake at its centre, the Lake of Faiyum. As this is not on the Nile, the theology here for Sobek-Ra is that He sinks into the lake in the west at dusk to be purified before rising at dawn on the east side.
Sobek is Lord here. The marshes and fertile land here, the rivers, lakes, and rushes, these are His home. He is always watching from the waters. This can be protective, or rageful, depending on His mood. His early worship was designed to quell His rage and protect against Nile crocodile attacks, and that never ceased to be part of His cult.
In the Faiyum, too, Sobek isn't just connected to Ra, but also to Heru-sa-Aset/Horus son of Isis. This gave Sobek His Kingship attributes. Here, He was Heru who is Sobek who is in Shedet, which is the capital of the Faiyum. He is the god who gathers up the bones of His father, Wesir/Osiris. He is Sobek Shedety, Sobek the Shedtite. He is the Lord of Love, the Lord who loves incense on the fire during ritual, the Lord of Myrrh.
The Book of the Faiyum is the biggest remaining source of myth that we have for Sobek. It concerns Sobek-Ra and is considered a mythic map of the Faiyum. As Sobek-Ra, He is creator, bright Sun, who sinks into the waters of the lake into the darkness to be purified. The mystical union of Ra and Wesir is of course brought into this, so in the one place, you can have Sobek as Heru who is also Sobek as Wesir-Ra, and if you think that has caused me some headaches over the years, you would be right! Congratulations! :D
I've been drawn back to the Midnight Sun union again this year, and contemplating these gods a decade after I last did has brought with it some more interesting discoveries. But a lot of that I can't necessarily talk about as it's Mystery Stuff.
I have also kept a website for Him, called Per Sebek, since 2004, which I started as a way to gather up all the information I could find on Sobek at the time and put it all in one place for people to access. It started as an angelfire site, then it moved to Wordpress in 2009, and now it's a neocities site, and you can find it at persebek.org.
I think the epithet of His that I love the most is the beautiful calf before the great flood. It gives me such a beautiful image of Sobek bringing in the annual floodwaters, standing there as He commands the waters to arrive and bring fertility to the land.
Did you reach out to them, or did they find you first?
He found me. I was working with Aset/Isis first, She was the first goddess I prayed to, and She replied. Then I added Djehuty/Thoth into the mix as I'm a writer, and that felt like a natural fit.
For Sobek, I feel like it should have been obvious, but I was clueless lmao. I have loved crocodiles and dinosaurs my whole life. As a child, I carried around this plastic crocodile with me, and I chewed on its tail so much it broke off. XD I don't know what happened to that crocodile, but I think it must have been thrown out at some point.
But I never found Sobek when I first started exploring Kemeticism. I had a book with Sobek in it, of course, but Aset and Djehuty were enough for the moment.
And then I went to the zoo one day. They'd just opened a new wetlands exhibit, and I was keen to see it. I hadn't been there before, didn't know my way in, didn't even know there was a crocodile in the middle, but you better believe me I was pulled to that crocodile. The animal's name was Simmo, and he was an Australian saltwater crocodile. These guys are Big. I think Simmo was 4.5m/~14ft long? And that's not as big as they get either. And he was just floating in the water, and I saw God in His eyes as he floated there, his nostrils above the waterline.
Just recounting it now, I can still feel that same Presence with me. How much I was drawn to this crocodile and didn't really know Who it was, but that Someone was calling to me. Sobek saw me that day, and I didn't realise it until I was looking in that same book afterwards, and saw Sobek's picture and He was like, 'Hi, yes, that was me!' And thus, our relationship began.
In 2004 I joined the House of Netjer and went through their beginner's class. Kemetic Orthodoxy had called to me, even though I was tentative about how scholarly their forums felt to me at the time. It was a bit intimidating! But I loved being there, and after I think 8 months after I was done with the beginner's class, I decided to undergo the Rite of Parent Divination, which reveals the gods that are your Parent/s and Beloved/s. Beloveds are gods that are helpers, ones who have stepped into your life, and Parents are ones who you belong to. They made your soul, you are Theirs.
My divination came back with one Parent and 4 Beloveds. Sobek, of course, was my Father, with Heru-sa-Aset, Aset, Djehuty, and Wepwawet as my Beloveds. Heru and Wepwawet I didn't know at that point, but I had relationships with all the others, and it was really affirming for me to have Sobek as my Father. I became a Shemsu and have followed Him ever since.
What is your favorite and least favorite part of working with them?
I think my favourite part of working with Him is just how loving He is. His presence, His guidance, His kindness, His ferocity. There's this old Egyptian saying, 'To Sobek with it!', for casting to Him things you want to get rid of.
I love His patience, His persistence. I never feel rushed to get to a particular point. We wander. I often describe walking with Him to be like travelling on the back of a crocodile as He swims through rivers. We meander, and explore, and if something catches my attention along the way, maybe we explore that too. Sometimes, the things He guides me to don't make sense until years later. But I love the process so, so much. He's beautiful and wonderful and I could talk about Him for hours.
I'm not sure there's a least favourite part of working with Him. Some might be put off with not knowing the path before them, for having to blindly trust that Sobek knows the best way and will guide you there in your own time.
Certainly Sobek has a rapacious reputation in the myths and such, and I think that can put some people off. They see Him as this hypersexual god who's only interested in satisfying His base instincts. He is The Rager, who can be angered easily and will lash out at anyone who gets in His way. That does make it hard to talk about Him as this loving, gentle, patient god as it feels so at odds when you compare it to what we have left of His cult and stories and epithets. And I don't deny those stories exist, they are part of His character and legacy. They just aren't ones I have encountered in working with Him for over 20 years now.
Also there just aren't many folks who work with Sobek, so it can get a bit lonely finding others who also work with Him and know Him the way I do. Hence I get a little eager to talk about Him anytime someone asks, as you don't often find Him talked about much. He's a bit obscure. You can find Hekate things till the cows come home, but Sobek things are harder to come by. I've written so many of my own rituals and hymns and such as there wasn't really anything to work from. But I am a much better liturgist than I was when I started out, so I'll take that. Any time someone tells me how much they loved performing one of my rituals, it brings me so much warmth. This lonely path is worth it if I get to walk with Sobek.
It's been a while, this year has been a Challenge to get stuff updated and such, but I have finally done some work on the site and added in a couple of rituals as well as got the virtual shrine up and running once again.
The morning and nighttime rites were important for me to get up, as they're the current ones I'm using. I like to have my current rites up on there as it helps to show what my practice looks like.
They're both based on rites in Richard Reidy's Eternal Egypt book, which is a book I go to a lot for ritual inspiration. I've got a more contemplative nighttime practice going on at the moment, with diving into the mysteries of the Midnight Sun, Sobek-Ra-Wesir, so. It's been written with that in mind.
You can find the rites here:
Morning Rite
Nighttime Rite
I've also finally got the virtual shrine up and running, so if anyone needs a virtual shrine for Sobek to leave prayers at, it's now up with a working guestbook for anyone to leave prayers at.
That's mostly it for now, but I do have other things I need to do there, but they'll have to wait, I have things to do now.
I've come to appreciate silence these past few days. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the side effects of the vaccines I got. I don't really know. But I am being drawn to silence again, and in silence, contemplation. It's another step in what inevitably comes when I find myself contemplating monasticism, which I do every so many years.
It's never a call to actual monasticism, since that is broadly impossible for me to do at this point in my life. It's more that desire to deepen my practice and my contemplation. That the gods have Things for me to contemplate and reflect on.
Being called to the silence is part of that. It's also part of my autism but it's also part of my spirituality.
Meretseger is an Egyptian goddess of the silent mountains in the Valley of the Kings, if I'm remembering correctly the last time I looked up Her lore. She is location-specific, caring for the dead in this one place. Embracing the silence that comes from absence, and loss, and bringing comfort at the same time.
I have met Her a few times in the past. She is indeed quite silent. A serpent, always, though I di dsee Her mixed with Bast once, where I got a cat-snake hybrid. Mostly She is snake. Mostly, always, She is silent.
She is not the silence I am being called to contemplate. It is the late night. The Midnight Sun. The sacred union of Sobek-Ra and Wesir in the Lake of the Faiyum every night, when Sobek-Ra sinks into the water to be purified so He may rise again in the morning.
This is the contemplation of sacred, holy, silent, darkness. Where the Sun does not Shine as during the day, but as during the night. Where the gods cease to exist as Many and become One.
I partly know why I am being called back to this, given it is Sobek-Ra's year. But it does tend to come around every now and then, to bring me back to silent contemplation. To be meditating on the Union and what that means.
I'm in a very different place now than the one I was in last time this came up. I'm ten ears older at least, and my path and practice have been through many changes. Good changes, of course, but still, changes.
The Ra side of Sobek-Ra comes out more this time. It's a fixating on the Sun Itself and what He undergoes during this union. How things change and bind and swirl and break apart. How They can join and become One in sacred union. How Sobek plays His part, and undergoes the same kind of union, and what that does to Him.
I'm much better at keeping a naos these days, even if my naos right now is just a long piece of black velveteen hanging down in front of my statues. I also have a better understanding of the naos itself and what it represents.
The gods exist in holy darkness while in Their naos, only coming out during ritual to kiss the face of Ra. The naos is a microcosm of a macrocosm, a small piece of the Sobek-Ra-Wesir puzzle.
I do have statues of Wesir and Ra next to my Sobek statue in my naos. If I had a cabinet that would fit my statues, I would contain all three in the same naos. Why? It's to remind me of His mysteries and what Sobek wants me to look at these days. Which iru of His is most prominent. Currently, that is Sobek-Ra.
My evening rites these days are deep and contemplative. Reworked versions of Ra's nighttime ritual, as outlined in RIchard Reidy's Eternal Egypt book, are what I have in my ritual book. I had other nighttime rituals I could have used, but I felt called to that one. To make it more contemplative. To give myself time to reflect on the Union and the Midnight Sun, and what that means for me. What mysteries it unlocks for me.
And it all comes back to silence. Silence, and contemplation. I need the space to hear, to listen, to sit with myself and the holy darkness. To be able to reflect on the Midnight Sun and how Sobek-Ra fits in with that, and how that brings about deeper things for me to contemplate.
Do I want to be a monastic with a vow of silence sometimes? Yeah, of course. I think a lot of things would be solved by that. But as that is both not possible for me nor what Sobek-Ra wants, I am left with the silence I have come to know well, listening for His voice as He tells me where we're going next.
Had these questions posed to me in the HoN discord, and felt the need to answer them. Because they are interesting questions, and I could write a lot about them.
1) What brought you to Polytheism and why did you choose the Kemetic religion over mainstream (monotheistic or otherwise) religions today?
2) On top of that: Why Kemetic Orthodoxy?
The short answer to this is that a former high school friend told me one afternoon in yr 11, 'you love ancient Egypt so much, why don't you worship those gods instead?', and so I did, and They responded, and that was my path settled for the most part. I became a Kemetic polytheist because the Kemetic gods responded to me and wanted my worship, so that's what I became.
I picked Kemetic Orthodoxy because it just seemed to resonate with me, and I liked the structure it had. I was initially intimidated by the scholarship but I got past that and it's been Home ever since, even though I left from 2010-2020 so I could explore and grow as a polytheist and come back stronger and with more skills and experiences.
1) The longer answer is that I'd grown up Christian, with parents who were Church of Christ ministers, so Church life was always there in some form. Church for me though was always a social thing, I think. I liked the people, and when you live in a manse next to the church, you see all the other things that go on at the church outside of Sunday services. There was a Thursday morning group for the elderly with lawn/carpet bowls, my mum set up a toy library that was open a couple of days a week, that kind of thing. So Church, for me, wasn't solely and only about worship. It was for all these other things too.
I was, of course, christened as a baby, but I was never baptised. My parents asked me when I was maybe 9 or 10 if I wanted to be baptised, and I remember saying no at the time, as I wasn't sure, and wanted more time to make a decision about it. My younger brother went for it though. But I do appreciate being given that choice.
My decision against baptism wasn't really rooted in any kind of alternative strong desire to worship other gods. It was just not feeling like that was right for me at that time, and I wanted to think about it some more. I wasn't really able to articulate most of the feels at that time until I was a teenager.
We moved churches - and denominations - when I was 12 or so because we moved. And I left all my friends behind, and while there were other kids at this new church, an Anglican church, I just never really connected with them. Which was fine, like, I didn't not enjoy church ofc. The old church I came from was part of the Methodist tradition, and to go from something more basic to an Anglican church with incense and candles and more ceremony was fascinating, but also a bit of a culture shock.
I think by the time I was 14 though I'd sort of stopped going. Church wasn't really doing anything for me, and I think at that point I was kind of pulling away from the religious side as well as the social stuff. My parents were good about it and didn't force me to go to church, so I had my Sunday mornings to myself. If I'd know the word 'agnostic' at the time, I might have used it to describe myself, but really I hadn't given up on God/s, I just was looking for something other than Christianity. Something Else was out there, I just didn't know what or Who.
The first kind of epiphany was in yr10 when we had to do a comparative religion project on some other world religion for religious studies, and I picked Hinduism. And that was the first time I really had bothered to look into any other religion at all in any depth other than Christianity. It was eye-opening. Sometimes you need to see how other people do religion to work out what you do and don't want. I wasn't in any way converted at that point, I just had this other idea that there were other ways to worship, and also that God didn't need to be One. God could be Many. And I know now that it's way more complicated than that in Hinduism, but back then, that was an astounding thing to sit with and understand for someone coming from a purely Christian monotheistic background.
Again, I sat with that and didn't really do much with it. I was still looking for Something but was still not really able to conceptualise that into anything concrete yet. This was the late 90s, so books about witchcraft and other alternate spiritualities were all over the place.
What started tipping me towards polytheism and paganism in general was a book a former high school friend lent me that was about the ancient Aryans in India and their religion iirc. I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author anymore. But that was what it was about, and I think something began working in my head as I started reading about how OLD polytheism was, which I hadn't quite grokked fully.
At some point after this, came the conversation at the start of this piece, about why don't you just worship the Egyptian gods since you love ancient Egypt so much? And tbh, it was pretty sound logic for someone who was looking for something.
I had always loved ancient Egypt. My dad does too. I think I got it from him. It was never covered enough in school, but I loved reading about it. Something about it just called to me.
And with nothing left to really lose, I bought this statue of Aset that I still have, and I prayed to Her, expecting nothing. Because the Christian god had never given me anything so what the hell. But Aset responded, and that got me started. That this was actually real. That these old gods were still around and I could talk to Them. O:
So I went looking for books on paganism and Wicca and witchcraft, and the first one I found at the library was The Mysteries of Isis by de Traci Regula, and I adored that book so much. I still do! It took me years and years to buy my own copy, but it is one of my cherished books. It taught me how to worship the gods!
And because it was the late 90s, I also read Teen Witch by Silver Ravenwolf. Because of course. There was also some Scott Cunningham as well. But that had set me off on a Wiccan path in yr12, because I had nothing else to work with, and well. Why not try it? Other girls in my year were also into witchcraft/Wicca and we would buy and swap books with each other. I also started doing tarot readings at school. But that's a digression at this point.
I've always called myself a polytheist or considered myself one ever since I found paganism and the Kemetic gods. I still do, though my conceptions of polytheism are much more squishy than they used to be. I still really only do Senut to Netjer, not to any specific Name. I think that's just the way polytheism and my gods have changed and shaped me as we've walked together. It's not really a monotheistic lean, it's more nuanced than that. Netjer is One and Many at the same time.
2) Why Kemetic Orthodoxy? Well. I was only really Wiccan for maybe a year at most before I wanted something more Kemetic. Turns out, it was difficult for me to teach myself Wicca on my own lmao and it wasn't always easy to find stuff on the late 90s/early 00s internet.
In looking for Kemetic groups, I found the House of Netjer back in 2001, and had a browse of their forums. I was interested, but I was a little intimidated by their scholarship, and felt I wouldn't be able to match that. So I went looking elsewhere.
I eventually landed with Akhet Hwt-Hrw, who I didn't know until after I joined the House that they were an offshoot of Kemetic Orthodoxy. They did give me some rituals to work with though, and I adapted them to my gods, Sobek, Aset, and Djehuty. It was the first time I really tried doing Egyptian rituals, and not just Wicca with Egyptian gods.
I definitely wasn't as into them as an organisation as I wanted, though. The focus on Hetharu when I was devoted to Aset was a little jarring, but I made it work. I think I also found the Fellowship of Isis around this time and joined them, but I really did nothing much with them either.
At some point, I left Akhet, I think because they were changing their structure or something idk I don't remember the details anymore. And I took it as a sign that I didn't belong there. And that's when I went back to the House, and this was in 2004. A lot happened in 2004. I first created the Per Sebek website, with all the research and notes I had on Sobek that I'd gleaned from the internet at that time. I joined the House and signed up for the beginner's class. I was starting to talk to other Kemetics and connecting with them.
I can't remember specifically if I had any dreams or other signs that the House was my Home, but there may have been. But I was convinced of it by the time I'd finished the beginner's course anyway and after several months of being a remetj and waiting to see how I liked being a member as well as the rites and such and getting to know the rest of the Temple, I got divined and became a Shemsu in 2005.
I stayed with the House until 2010, when the House underwent a reorganisation, and people were being asked if they wanted to stay or go under the new structure. There was a lot of anguish about this at the time due to some of the changes that were implemented, but my decision to leave had nothing to do with that.
Djehuty had planted the idea of Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset as divine twins to me, and as only Sobek was my Father, and Heru-sa a Beloved, I felt I really needed to get out of the House and the Temple structure of parents and beloveds to work out that mystery. Which is what I did.
I did a lot while I was gone. I was a druid, and part of ADF Druidry. I dabbled in Roman and Hellenic and Anglo-Saxon polytheisms. I met Hekate in 2012 because of Sobek. I did a lot of wandering. I did a lot of blogging, too. Per Sebek moved from a static website to a wordpress blog, and I wrote So Much oml. The Kemetic blogosphere was pretty busy back then, and I was sharing all kinds of writings and rituals and such as I pieced together my own practice.
I learned so much on my own. I needed to, I think. Sometimes you need to go off on your own to find yourself and everything I experienced on that path enriched my practice in multitudes. I wouldn't be here without that time apart.
It was the yearning need for Community that brought me back to the House at Wep Ronpet 2020. I wasn't as connected to other pagans or Kemetics at that point, and the pandemic was really only getting started. So I went Home. Netjer told me to go Home, and so I did. And I've been in the House ever since, in a much better position to be a Shemsu and follow my gods and contribute to the House and its' community than I was back then.
I definitely fell a little behind on this, but this week, and the next lot of prompts for Febaruary are much more defintional than 'write three pages of your thoughts' prompts, so I'm going to approach them all in one go, rather than one per.
Also these are all simply my own thoughts without doing any research, because sometimes it's a good thing to see where your own understanding is at, so you can focus your studies on places where you aren't so well-studied. So don't expect these to be in any way accurate, just my off-the-cuff thoughts. I may come back to these at some point and do some proper study so I can have some actual definitions to put in my physical grimoire. Which is another reason I'm doing all these prompts in one go.
energy work: energy work is working with energy to obtain some kind of result. it can be for spellwork, healing, cursing, any purpose at all. if it involves raising your own energy or that of other entities or gods to do the thing you want to do, that's energy work.
visualisation: this is a technique where you visualise what it is you want to achieve or the result you want for particular spellwork, to aid in manifesting it as reality. Envisioning what it is you want, the kind of job you want, the life you seek to have, anything like that, to give you something solid to draw on when crafting your spellwork and raising energy. Visualisation doesn't always result in vivid imagery in your head like a movie, and not everyone can even see things in their mind, but the way I learned how to do it was to craft an astral landscape. To picture myself standing in a field of wheat, and then exploring where I was and what might happen after that. Anni taught me that one, and I will forever bless her name for it. <3
energy manipulation: manipulating energy to do work. this could be charing amulets, raising and directing energy for healing or protection or abundance magic or whatever else you're trying to do. shielding is a form of energy manipulation. it's taking energy and charging it with intent to do the thing you want it to do. at least that's my understanding of it.
grounding: grounding is releasing excess energy from your body back into the ground. it is usually done after spellwork or other energy-raising work. sometimes it is literally touching grass, where you go out, bare-foot, and stand in the grass or dirt to release that energy into the ground. but it can be done with visualisation as well, picturing the energy running from you and into the earth.
charging: this is usually for amulets, talismans, or other objects that need specific energy with a specific intent put in them. a ring can be charged for protection, and this can be by you directly putting energy into it, or by charging it with the energy from the full moon, or some other being or entity.
centring: this is a practice of drawing energy into yourself, and centring it in yourself for use later in spellwork. it's not a storage thing, but something where you bring in that energy into your centre to ensure you are prepared and ready to do the work that needs doing.
sending/receiving: sending energy is about gathering energy into yourself and then sending it out once it has a purpose, target, or intent attached to it. you may send energy out for protection, for healing, especially if you are doing spellwork for others. receiving is taking in that energy from other sources, such as other people, gods, spirits, planets, elements, or the land itself.
raising: drawing energy into yourself from other sources for the purpose of spellwork or ritual. this isn't just visualising energy coming in. it can be done through chanting, dance, music or song, drum beats, trance, sex, anything that works to get that energy rising through your body so it can be channelled into the work that needs doing.
channelling: drawing down energy from an external source, such as a deity, to then send to somewhere or into something else. channelling goddess energy in trance ritual, for example, or the voices or words of other gods, spirits, or ancestors. bringing energy down for healing purposes from external beings.
astral work: work done in the astral plane, however that manifests for you. for me, my astral plane is very much centred around that landscape i made back in 2014 or so, and it's where i go to meed my gods in meditation. it's a place away from time. it's something i gave life to, and which the gods can change and work with at will. it can also be a collective space for people to access in terms of shared sacred spaces, temples, meeting places, that kind of thing.
energy fields: everything emits energy, and how far away that energy can be detected is its energy field. this can be tapped into for protection work, shielding, that kind of thing.
replenishing energy: this can be as simple as resting, or it can be a more deliberate drawing in of energy when your own has been depleted. food and eating can replenish energy, so can grounding, or being outside in nature, resting, a bath, anything that helps your energy return to a more normal state.
sensing energy: fucked if i know. i do know i can sense energy but it feels sort of like a heightened sort of emotion. but it's not really very specific unless it needs to be, and a lot of the time, i just feel nothing so. throws hands up
meditation: a method to still the mind and go into yourself. a way of reaching higher planes of existence. and for me, a way to contact my gods consistently. nothing else seems to work. i sit, i close my eyes, and i find myself elsewhere. sometimes it is just letting my brain wander and sort itself out, but other times, i can close my eyes and the gods are just there regardless. it depends on what work needs doing, if there's any messages i need to take in, that kind of thing. i have found that it's calmed me down significantly since i started meditating daily nearly 3000 days ago, which is 9 years? i think? something like that. it helped foster compassion in my heart centre. i find myself much less judgemental about people. i am calmer, more chill, and at much better ease with myself. all the work i've done in meditation has changed me significantly, and if you're a person who can meditate without it causing you harm, bc it can for some people with anxiety or other issues, then it's a practice you should definitely consider doing regularly. ten minutes in the morning is my regular practice and it's done me so well. i would not do without it these days. it is the thing that helps me have good days and progress the work i need to do.
auras: m8 idek what auras are supposed to be. i know very little about them. i get the impression they're meant to be like, indicators of your personality? or something? bc they are different colours or some shit like that? fucked if i know. sounds like something someone came up with while tripping balls tbh. either way, i can't see shit, so it's no bearing on my life. the closest thing i get to 'auras' is just being able to sense someone's vibe, and even then it's so stupidly nonspecific apart from like, 'i like you', 'you irritate me', and like 'i never want to speak to you again', so like. :/ which is kinda helpful? but also kinda not lmao. but it's the closest thing to sensing auras that i have. bc idk how much stock i really put in them as a useful thing. like, good on someone if it works for them but like. it ain't do shit for me so. throws hands up
dream work: i absolutely suck at dream work. XD i had a very fruitful and vivid dreaming period in my late teens/early 20s, and i still have a lot of those dream records. but once that period settled down, my dreaming just vanished. i do occasionally rememeber dreams, but it's so rare i don't even bother recording them these days. i have tried, of course. i've had periods where i kept a dream journal just to see if keeping it helped me remember my dreams better, but it didn't really help. my dreaming is, according to Djehuty, 'unreliable'. and like, yeah, tbf it really fucking is. sometimes i dream shit, a lot of the time i don't. if ppl are trying to get messages through to me in dreams, i ain't paying attention. it's just not a method that really works for me. i have thought about lucid dreaming before, but tbh i think i can just get better results in meditation, so that's what i intend to stick with for the time being until i get told otherwise, or until my dreaming suddenly improves overnight or something. either way, i respect the dreaming, but i do not have the dreaming. it is not my tech, and that's okay. tbh i do not miss that period of intensely vivid dreams. it was a Lot and not all of them were really religious dreams either. there was a lot going on in my brain and it clearly needed to sort some shit out. and it did just that. so there.
Doing week 6 in one go as well, bc I don't really need a whole 3 pages on all of these tbqh. The final question on magical morality is one I definitely need to do a proper entry on though, as I would like to explore that in a little more detail. I think something like that requires some thought and reflection first before I commit it to paper. I know where I stand, but how and why is something I really want to dig deeper into, and look at how that stance is compatible (or not) with my own practice and the rules and guidelines I set for myself with my magical practice.
taglocks and magical anchors:
Taglocks and magical anchors are used in spellwork to target someone specific by using something that came from them, like hair, fingernails, clothing, even their own writing. It's a way to target that person with good or ill magic. It's how poppets can be used to do healing work, by using a taglock to signify where to send the healing energy.
They aren't needed necessarily. It depends on the working and what the goal is. If I were petitioning the gods for someone, or on their behalf, I would simply use their name, which is also a kind of taglock, but it isn't a physical component. A photograph could also be used as a taglock, with the possibility of writing or drawing sigils or other intention phrases on the back to aid in the spellwork.
For baneful magic, using taglocks can in some ways enhance the magic. A freezer spell can be something like this, given it uses the name to target someone.
I know the use of taglocks goes back many, many years though. It's old magic. Sometimes it can be done consentually, where you agree to do magic on someone's behalf, and take up a taglock to better target the magic either to the person themselves, or to the person they want to do magic for.
cleansing: cleansing is a way to rid an object or person of unwanted energies or entities. It's usually done to prepare a space for magic, to purify yourself before spellwork or ritual, to cleanse a deck or other magical tool or object to rid it of it's previous owner's energy before you use it yourself, or other related reasons.
For spellwork in particular, it's more common for objects or spell ingredients. It's about clearing the object of any previous energies or intents so you can use it for the purpose you need it for at the moment.
sigils: sigils are ways of coding intent phrases or words into a symbol that is then charged and activated for spellwork. It's a set and forget kind of magic, where the energy and intent goes into the creation and drawing and charging of the symbol. They are usually activated by burning, but not always.
There are many ways to create sigils. The creation of the intention phrase is usually coming up with something no more than maybe 4-7 words. Then it's about reducing that phrase down to single letters, either through numerology, or other means. Usually it's cutting out the vowels, then cutting doubled letters, until you just have a string of letters that represent your phrase.
How you draw the sigil after that can be via a number of ways. It can be freehanded, or you can use some kind of table or diagram to create the sigil that lays out the letters of the alphabet that you trace over with the letters in order, and then that's your sigil. It's a similar process to using runes to make a bindrune, combining them together to make a sigil-like symbol to use for protection or whatever intent you want.
petitions: petitions are requests, more than commands. they can be written on paper, or on some other thing, and then burnt as a way to send that petition to the gods or spirits. It's usually part of a ritual of some kind, and isn't spellwork in the sense of you doing the thing yourself, but asking for something to be done. asking for a sign or symbol to confirm something, asking for something to come to fruition, that kind of thing. these may or may not come with an offer to do something for the god/spirit if they follow through, but many do as a gesture of reciprocity.
charms: charms, to me, are like talismans? amulets? idk something like that. i'm not sure specifically how they're different from those two things though. my other context for charms is like, small rhyming phrases or verses used to enchant something or invoke something. i have no idea if either of these definitions are correct though but that's what i think they are. :D
binding/unbinding: the purpose of binding or unbinding is a way of restricting or unrestricting someone or something from causing harm, usually. you might bind someone to stop them from causing themselves harm, or unbind someone if they have been bound themselves for other purposes. it does have quite narrow uses, but if you're lost for other methods, it might be what you need to do. it's efficacy is not something i know well of since i've never needed to do it, but it's similiar to a freezing spell, but on steroids.
also morality of magic: using magic for/on other ppl for good/ill intent.
I don't see a problem with doing magic on people or for people. I think that's a choice everyone has to make, but it's something i would approach on a case by case basis, not something that's a blanket yes or no for me. if someone asked me to cast a healing spell on them or a protection spell, i would do that. but if they asked for something that felt more malicious or intended to harm, i would probably decline.
I've just started rereading the Temple of the Cosmos by Jeremy Naydler, and I appreciated the little primer he gives about the directions of Egypt and how it's situated in its landscape. It made for a good reminder about the directions and how they were conceptualised.
The Nile dictated everything about Egypt, from its geography, flooding, and fertility. South-North, and West-East were the pairs of directions, because everything in Egypt has that duality attached. I loved the way Naydler described south as indicating front, north indicated back, east was left and west was right, as if you were standing there facing the Nile upstream, seeking its source, and the delta was behind you. It's so rooted in the body as much as the landscape.
And I think about how, if I was going to do the same, I would indeed face North for front, as I would then be looking upwards to the source of the Nile, with South behind me. West would be on my left, and east on my right.
And, interestingly, I am sitting at my computer, which is on the South wall of my room, and I've spent the afternoon shifting my Senut shrine to the North wall, and my planetary altar to my east altar under the window. I still keep a little jewellery cabinet that belonged to my maternal grandmother on my western wall on the bookshelves there, so it's not quite a proper ancestor shrine, but ancestor stuff is there. I don't have a full ancestor shrine there as there's no room, and also that's where my bed is.
I've talked a little about how I incorporate directions into my practice, so I won't go on with that, but the latest development has come from finding a ritual framework for my planetary rites. I decided to use Richard Reidy's general rite to the Netjeru, which is, arguably, quite involved, and it will need some tweaking I think to make it feel Planetary, but I think it's a good framework to work from. And I didn't realise until I started transcribing it that it has a space clearing/purifying part that invokes that S-N, W-E pairings. And I wanted some kind of thing that set up sacred space but wasn't circle casting, so that will be perfect, I think.
I'm nowhere near practicing it yet. I still need to write the custom hymns and such for each planetary god, and then do some rehearsals to make sure I like the flow and to see if there's any changes I want to make. I won't finalise it and write it in my ritual book until it's finished. and I think, this time, I'll do one planet at a time. I want to perfect it, and make sure the words feel right.
The whole point of wanting such a formal style is to kind of echo the more traditional planetary magic practices, but in a wholly Kemetic framework. I wanted that same sense of a ritual that invokes and seeks union/connection with these Powers, and I think this will do it. Bringing offerings to these specific planetary gods I think feels like a good way to build up our connections. Like, sure, there's three Herus, and Wesir, and Iah, and Aten, and Djehuty, but like, these planetary aspects are not very well known or acknowledged, so I feel like they would appreciate a bit of attention.
Does it feel like I'm doing More than I would for my line-up? Yes, and no. I don't intend to do these kind of rites on the daily. I do not have the energy for that. But as a framework for a working, for making sigils? Like, that's hella useful. So I'm going to work on these rites. See how I go coming up with hymns and such.
I do think I want to get a broom for removing the foot, but tbf I do already have one in my room. But I might use that for practice and see if it feels like a good fit, and if not, then I'll look for a new one.
But yeah. Directions. They've always been super important to my practice. And I also use above and below, heavens and underworld, especially when casting circle. Directions are how I arrange my space, how I think about where things go, and what feels right. Sobek rises in the east and sets in the West. And, tbh, having my planetary altar on the east wall, which is the rite I do in the morning, feels right as well. It'll get that morning sunshine. So that's the post that's going to do for the week 4 prompts for directions, bc no one needs 5 lots of 750 words on each direction and up and down, just saying. So I'll move on to other things tomorrow.
Divine energy is the one I work with the most. I don't do Capital T Theurgy, just regular theurgy. That is the most effective magic for me. How I work my theurgy isn't really easy to describe with words. It is, perhaps, best summed up with the image that Sobek gave me a few days ago. He is simply standing beside me at my altar as we work magic together. Conceptually, actually, He's with me the whole time. We work magic together. That is the best way I can describe it.
I don't know if I will write full pages for each deity I work with though. That's a Lot of deities! I do Not have that much space or time. But the main deities I work with are Sobek, Aset, Hekate, Djehuty, and Hermes, along with the planetary energies and gods associated with Them.
I think I kind of ... don't necessarily like the wording of this prompt, and of course there's no need to take the prompt as is, but I think acknowledging when things are uncomfortable or don't fit your world view is a good thing sometimes. I feel like I don't necessarily see these gods that I work with as like.
idk. I have good, close relationships with these gods. I would take anything to Sobek, first and foremost, as He is my Father, and that feels like the right thing to do. Obviously gods have their own special interests and areas of particular expertise, and if you have need of that, by all means go to those gods that feel appropriate. But I tend to just go to Whomever feels right at the time. Sometimes I need Aset, or Hekate, or maybe even Heru-wer's special powers for things, but sometimes, I just take it all to Sobek.
I definitely appreciate the people who take a more 'specialist' approach to their theurgy, but I'm not one of those necessarily. I am sometimes. But not always. I focus mostly on fostering good, close relationships with my gods, not because I need something or want to work magic, but because I love Them and this partnership benefits us both if They're willing.
For me, it's about building and maintaining that relationship. It's what we can learn from each other. Which, I guess, from what I know about Theurgy, is not that far off. Except mine isn't really focused at all on that whole Divine Union thing. Unless it's Sobek-Ra-Wesir, of course.
But I probably should read up more about Theurgy, if only because it interests me and I'd like to see how our perspectives and approaches are similar and differ. It's another thing to add to my long list of research topics. I hope to make a nice list of them that I can return to next year, perhaps. Things to spend a month or so on and just do a deep dive. I can spend time on them then. For now, this will do.
I do want to cover something about weather magic. But I don't know if I have the brain power for that righ tnow. I have had some experience with the rain and wind, and directing it away from my washing that I'm hanging out. But I don't really have any deeper experience with doing weather magic.
I have, however, been drawn to the Four Winds, and the initial work I've done with them has been interesting. I'm going to spend next week diving deeper into them, instead of the elements, as I'm more interested in the directions, and the Four Winds, as integral parts of my practice in a way the elements aren't. And I want to dedicate some time to studying them and giving myself more information to work from.
We already have easterly winds and westerly winds here in my state that have huge impacts on the weather here. Being able to tap into the West wind to cool down the city would be a good thing to work on. And I'd like to do that for all the directional winds here too. Yes, get to know Them in a Kemetic format, but also how they manifest here. My easterly winds are hot and dry, is that also the case for the East Wind? We'll see! It'll give me an excuse to go outside and feel the winds and connect with them.
The directions have always made more sense to me as something to work with. Not that I haven't worked with the elements in the past, but the directions make sense of my world in a way elements don't. They place me in the world, situate me in place, and that makes me happy. Elements, I find, a little too pure for the messy world of reality. Good for those who resonate with them, but not for me.
Sun, moon, tides, water, trees, these are things I connect with in some way, but not in a spiritual sense half the time. Just things that resonate, and that I can tap into sometimes. Tides tap into lunar energy for me, as they are most affected by the moon's movements during the month. Sure, it's water, but it's not really water to me. It's primary association to me is the moon. I also don't see the moon as 'cold' necesssarily in contrast to the hot sun. It's more light/dark than hot/cold. Is the moon cold? Probably! But it's not the main vector for me. It borrows light from the sun. The only reason we can see it is because of the sun. It's dark way more than cold. So that's how I tend to see it.
Celestial energies are a topic I want to actually write on at length. That's a super important part of my practice, and while I mostly connect with planets and stars at the moment, I'm open to other celestial energies and objects as well. I want to also figure out a set of Decan stars I can work with and work on connecting to them as well. I'd love to see how those spirits can be tapped into. I might work off compiling a list from the star oracle I have, as well as the calendar, and see if I can find a good list to work with, and spirits I can say are my decan stars.
Part of me wants to keep working with the star oracle decans, just because I use them for keeping my dates anyway. If I use a different list, I may have to make up my own set and go from there. I will say, having a set of decan stars with their own cards/representations will be helpful, as I'm not commissioning 37 statues of the decan stars. but it would help me work with them more specifically too.
I would love to have more specific statues of the planetary gods though. I know that would likely not happen unless I commission them, but I really should look into finding appropriate statues that I can adapt into more appropriate depictions of them.
I do find the Kemetic planets have a different vibe to the more classical planets. It's taking some time to really tap into Their energies, but I'm going to try to work on that this year, and do my best to connect more deeply with Them.
I do really love the planets though. I find such deep wonderful connections to them when I tap into them, especially Mercury and Saturn. Those are my two favourite planets, and I have a deep love for them. But I do love them all too. I find them such wonderful energies to work with. My planetary practice is in a bit of a flux as I still have those connections to the classical deities I started with while I'm working on connecting to the Kemetic ones. But I think that will improve once I start writing rites for them and I can actually start doing planetary magic and not just sigils and such.
I have some information, but I really need to find more about them. One source is not enough to really feel like my work is more than just bullshitting based on one thing that feels right. So maybe when we get to that celestial week later in the year, I'll see if I can dig into Kemetic planetary gods again, and see if I can uncover something more that I can incorporate into my practice.
But the more I work with this kind of planetary magic, the more I can share it with others, and then others can begin working with these energies as well. I don't really know how big planetary magic was in ancient Egypt. Clearly important enough to know the planets and name them and give them depictions, but doing magic with them? Maybe not. So I am once again building something from nothing, but sometimes that's when you have the most fun. Just exploring to see where something takes you. And I'm so looking forward to that, and building a more solid planetary practice with these gods.
So this week's prompt is about energy sources, and the first one is elements. And I'll be honest, I don't really use the elements in my practice at all. The only place they really come in is for the 'map' I have of the landscape around me, representing where the elements are and the gods and directions associated with them.
In the west, here, we have ocean. The Indian ocean, to be precise. It's cooling, here. Sea breezes come in summer afternoons off the ocean to cool the city down. We have some wind chimes on the western side of our house, so we can hear when the sea breeze comes in. West, then, becomes Water, and is represented by Sobek, watery crocodile god of Egypt. He who navigates the waters of the Duat like no other. So that is my element of Water. Water is in the West. Water is Sobek.
The east is inland, where the hills are. In summer here, easterly winds are hot and come off the land to heat the city up. We do not like easterlies here lol. My bedroom window faces east, so in summer it's a nightmare unless I shade my window somehow, and keep it closed, so the hot air doesn't just seep into my bedroom and heat the place up. Because of the easterlies, East is Air, and East is also Heru-sa-Aset. He flies in, rising high, sweeping down over the city, bringing His fire and heat.
North of my city you'll be going towards the equator and the more tropical parts of Australia. It's hot and dry and wet, with cyclones and floods and drought. This is the land of Ra, the land of Fire. It does fit other gods too, like Sekhmet and Set, but it has always been Ra for me. Ra, god of the sun, whose tears became humankind, Ra, who rules in the North, the land of Fire.
The southern part of my state is green and fertile and cool. Black soils bring good food and wine to harvest. It's wet and temperate, with forests and mountains and lakes and rivers. It's my favourite part of the state to be in, if I'm honest. It's perfect weather. And if you're lucky, and you get to Bluff Knoll on the right day at the right time, you might even see snow. Just a little bit of it. South is Earth for me. South is Wesir, green of face.
And that's about it, as far as incorporating elements into my practice goes. I am much more likely to use directions, South-North, West-East, than elements in setting sacred space. It comes from my Kemetic practice as much as anything else, but it's just the one that works for me.
The second prompt is personal energy, and I'll be honest, my answer to this one is 'idk'. I just don't sense energy enough to be able to talk well about how it's used, manipulated, where it comes from, that kind of thing. I just do not know, not even on a theoretical level. Do I put my own energy into my spells? Sure. Do I know HOW I do that and where it comes from? Not in the slightest! I never really sense it or feel it either. I just hold my hands over the thing, imagine my energy going into it, and somehow, that works. throws hands up This is a limitation of my experience. Without being able to sense it, build it, manipulate it, etc, it's all just coloured light in my brain tbh. It's all just my imagination. Does that count? I have no idea.
Energy work, for me, is not something I really understand well enough to do. Okay, like, I know how you're meant to do it, but for whatever reason, I can try all I like, but I get no feedback. So I have no real idea if I'm doing anything or not. Sometimes, on rare occasions, I'll have some small sense of Something from my deity statues, but it's not really often enough for me to be able to do much with it. And believe me, I have Tried to do energy work stuffs. I just can't seen to feel any of it so I have no idea if I'm actually doing anything, or if I'm just sitting here moving my hands back and forth, and nothing is coming through. So it's definitely a Me Problem, it's just not a skill I have. So I have less to say about it. I do want to maybe look into this a bit more so I have some idea but honestly? I got nothing rn.
I got my notebook delivered yesterday, and have spent today copying in the first week of entries and setting things up. I am giving my hands a break now, and did some Art to decorate the pages. I've decided to call it the Book of Sobek in His Heaven. Have sketched out the title page as well, but I may change it up tbh.
This is art of Sobek-Ra, and I am pondering plans for how to finish the art on the other side of the page, but haven't decided what yet. But it's coming together I think. :D
I've decided to call it the Book of Sobek in His Heaven. Have sketched out the title page as well, but I may change it up tbh.
