by

Kintsugi

It is apparently not actually factual that the Egyptians used portions of the Eye of Heru to represent major fractions, at least according to Wikipedia.

the Eye of Heru

Eye of Heru artwork from the Guide

No matter.

One doesn’t have to literally take the eyebrow as an eighth, the pupil as a quarter, the trailing tear as a sixty-fourth to learn the truth.

The eye of Heru used as a sacred amulet, the protective udjat, is the one which was wounded, that which was torn out in conflict with Set, which was (along with Set’s testicles, which suffered similar injury) restored by the powers of Djehwty. This is the eye which was broken, the moon eye which fades and comes back into wholeness.

The fractions add up to sixty-three out of sixty-four.

The eye is whole.

It is greater than its visible portions, its undamaged parts considered separately.

This is the secret of the udjat eye, the eye of Heru: that the greater wholeness is the one that emerges from incompletion, the greater health is that which has shown itself greater than the damage it has suffered. This is the symbol of a perfected imperfection, its mathematical suggestiveness of incompletion no more than a guidepost to that which is within.

It is not unbrokenness that is most mighty; it is restoration. That which has been remade is greater than that which was never wounded.

Relevant links:
Frauenkirche
Kintsugi

by

I Aten’t Dead

My health has taken a significant turn for the worse and it is severely interfering with my ability to put blogthoughts together. I expect to resume normal transmissions when I have returned to the place of functional medication. As of yet I do not have knowledge of when I will return to the place of functional medication.

Prayers are appreciated, if you are inclined. (But please no distance healing stuff; my energy patterns are an unholy mess. Maybe I will write a ka-and-health post at some point. When I can make the thinkythoughts actually go.)

by

Emergence

It is turning to spring here.

It is a fiddly thing to ponder in terms of calendars, with spring coming here after Peret has wound to its conclusion.

But even with the seasons as they are (and not as they are not) there are the places where it nonetheless works. Where the spring rain that finally brings the greening to the trees has fallen at last, filling a bowl with water from the Inundation, so that I might be prepared for the Beautiful Festival of the Western Valley.

(I have strained the water into a jar and popped it upstairs with my shrine and ritual supplies.)

Today we got ten dollars’ worth of little yellow flowers and planted them in front of the house, because the older kid wanted to plant yellow flowers with her grandparents. She has watered them with her little watering can, encouraging emergence.

Encouraging the spring.

by

Harvest Festival of Min

One of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how Egyptian festivals fit into my (northern hemisphere temperate) seasons. I mean, my lepidopterist’s calendar has a harvest festival for Min on Friday, and around here we’re … not safely past the last frost date.

Someone in a southern hemisphere temperate climate would likely be nicely in the middle of their main harvest period right around now, and be happily able to do a full-up reaping of the wheat or whatever (or at least think about it usefully) right around now.

However.

The first stuff we harvest around here is greens.

So I’m thinking lettuce wraps for dinner on Friday might be a good thought.

(There may be a more substantive festival post later, but I wanted to get this thought squared away.)

by

The Accidental Syncretist

I have a deep yearning for artificial simplicity.

Back when I converted to Kemeticism, it was like coming home. It was like falling in love. It was this intense experience, an actual genuine conversion experience, and it was a big damn deal for me. I went out, I found a group to join, and I settled down to do the thing. I did regular ritual, and it fed me like no other ritual had before; I found language and framework to articulate theological and philosophical concepts I had been kicking around for years but couldn’t talk about coherently because I didn’t have a structure for them; I had a lovely honeymoon.

And then I had one of those Experiences, which told me “This isn’t enough for you.”

And I didn’t like that. I didn’t want it to be not enough.

And I chewed on it for a long time, and I did research, and I started exploring in the direction I had been shoved, and it turned out, several years later, that it was indeed not enough for me.

So I started doing other stuff too. And I built an artificial simplicity: I will do this, and I will do that too, and there is this illusion of multiplicity to work with, and I do not cross the streams.

There was a fascinating thing about doing other stuff more deeply, more thoroughly, and with more devotion: the more other stuff I did, the more it all looked like the same stuff. Here, this symbol matches that symbol, with similar resonances; here, this goal looks like that goal viewed from a different angle. And that was okay, that was a thing where I did the work and suddenly I was building a deeper framework because I was doing two things.

I’m okay with it when it feels like work.

And then …

… and then it gets different …

… and the artificial simplicities, the this-and-that, they break down, they fall away, there is this gaping chasm, and after the fall there is …

… actual simplicity.

And the parts of me that crave the neat and tidy boundaries scream. (But if you’re not being scared by something, you’re probably not doing something deep? People ask me how to make it safe, and I wonder what they’re looking for.) I do believe the Powers of Egypt can reveal themselves in the rest of the world (because otherwise what would be the damn point?), and yet having a Power present herself in symbology and structure from another part of the world makes me panic.

And I talk to people about it, and they say, “Yeah, that makes sense. I can see it.” I can see it too! I just … there are parts of me that don’t want to. That don’t want this additional tie-together of all the things I do as one thing, as a coherent thing of all sorts, that doesn’t want it to be that easy, because the ease of it feels like the moment when the audience shouts, “Don’t go in there! It’s a trap!” (It’s quiet. Too quiet.)

I don’t have Sannion’s holy-unholy glee about it. It scares me too much.

To lose the artificiality. The neat lines, the tidy categories that I never really believed in but clung to nonetheless.

So I go with it, of course. Because otherwise, what would be the damn point?