Ruminations (Religious)

[kiya]

This is something that's been rattling around in my head for a while, and the urge to try to write it down in a semi-linear fashion was provoked by something that irritated me over in nonfluffypagans.

Someone posted something asking about why modern pagans are so obsessed with the past, why can't they go with the new. I got the impression that the original poster was doing this from a POV that may not have equated "modern pagan" with "Wiccan or Wiccan-derived", but came damn close to it. I didn't limit my response to "Because some of us modern pagans are recons", but that was certainly part of it.

But it's gotten me thinking about my overall theological rattling about, over time.


I wasn't raised religious; I wasn't raised anti-religious. I was just sort of raised. I describe my family as 'secular Christian' and people stare at me like they've never heard of the concept before, even though I've always thought of it as sort of a default, Christianity as an ethnicity rather than a serious belief system.

I rattled around the edges of Christianity for a few years as a kid (even going to church), and then I rattled out again and bounced around, looking for a god who was interested in talking to me. I rattled into Wicca a bit after that, and it took me a bit longer to rattle out again. I find it hard to try to parse why I rattled out.

One of the things that I wrote in nonfluffypagans is that Wicca is too smooth and shiny for me. I'm a lumpy personality with sharp edges, and I don't feel like I fit. It was my closest match for a long time, but the core stuff wasn't there, the stuff that resonated with me.

Someone posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated recently asking if all goddesses were parts of The Goddess. I wish I knew how to reply to that. I know it works for some people, but the . . . ngrk.

I just know that when I wandered into Kemeticism and dropped the idea of The Goddess (or even The Goddess For Me) and The God [For Me], my spiritual life deepened, enriched itself. I'd gone for ten years with only one voice, and sometimes echoes of another. In the eight or nine months since I smacked myself around into a new paradigm, I've heard . . . two Parents (one of them the One I've been following since I was fourteen or fifteen), my Beloved, the faint rumbling around the edges of my past, and at least five Others. I am rich with ntjrw, because this way of listening works for me, and the other one . . . blinded me. And it was one of those things where I didn't know I could think about it differently until I fell into it.

(I'm now feeling reminded of fyrekat writing about trying to get Bast to accept being a moon goddess.)

My Parents, Het-Herw and Khnemu, my Beloved, Set; Bast who sends me dreams of kittens, Wepwawet who has always been silent at my shoulder and Who I recognise now that I can see Him, Djehuty, patron of my calling, and Amun and Sekhmet who had off-handed comments when I was talking with the one who brings out the gods in me and who I expect will drop by another time.

I am no priest; that is not my calling. I think that is part of why I also drifted out of Wicca; my responsibilities don't rest comfortably with that concept. It's too large for me. (This is probably related to the reason Buddhism doesn't work for me; I look at the ethos of reducing connection so as to be better able to look at the big picture and say "Yes, that's needful", but it's not osmething I'm suited to. I increase connection so as to be able to do the best with the small picture. World needs both of us, and people who blend 'em.)

Other people, I'm glad to have a system where other people are dealing with the big cosmic issues. I hate "The personal is the political". No, it's not. My personal is only political if people are trying to get in its way; if there weren't people in the way I wouldn't care. Just folksdoingstuff, y'know?

Anyway. That's a whole other rant.

I've got bits of Christianity in my head still. And I still find dwojwierny in there and meaning something. I never held it any ill-will, like I don't hold Wicca any ill-will; those systems don't work particularly well for me, at least not as a base. As embellishments, as supplementary material, that works.

So I study Orthodox stuff to go with my Methodism. (I find the Orthodox attitudes I know about much more sensical than the Western church stuff. And it works with the dwojwierny.) And I study Polish paganism, where some of my ancestors lie, and find things that work there -- again, as edges, not as system. But their snakes guarded their homes.

And the royal python guarded West African granaries, and was sacred. I wish I could find more about the beliefs in that region.

And I wish I could find more about Shinto, too, because alhandra's said there's stuff there that I think works well, and Shinto syncretises well.

And I wish I could find stuff about Ireland and the Sight that wasn't overwhelmed with crystal-waving flakes. *sigh*

But I think I've found that ma'at rests really handily at the core of what I mean, and I keep wanting to quote Issola to express it. "But only when it is appropriate."

I'm still eclectic; I think I'll always be eclectic. But 'eclectic' isn't a good core word anymore, because I've found a stone for the centre of the setting.

The core works out well to 'Kemetic'. As I said elsewhere, the old ways make sense to me, down in the core, and I think it's a bad thing that they were largely lost. The stuff that's more modern . . . I don't get. I sometimes think I'm fundamentally conservative, it's just that the conservative that I am manifests orthogonally to what it means in most political discourse nowadays.

There's value in the old ways, in the memory, of the ways that old gods were followed before time ground their edges off. I'm not just in it for the kyphi.

Discordian dwojwierny Kemetic. Probably missing a few modifiers there, too.

[ Rational romantic mystic cynical idealist. --Rush, "You Bet Your Life" ]


Probably more later. Gotta do the aspects-and-Parents ramble too, which is slightly less scatterbrained.

In other news, it's September. I'm allergic to September. No wonder I feel fucking awful. *sniffle*

Comments

[raingnosis.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you posted this - I was going to post a reply here but I realized it's getting long and I should probably post it to my own LJ.

[kiya]

I look forward to reading it.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Tangential to this, but addressing the question of why some people focus on the old, in the Religio Romana (aka Roman Reconstructionism) it is extremely important to conduct each ritual in accordance with the 'mos maiorum' (the way things were). The belief is that it's what the old Capitoline gods want, and the argument is that it's what kept them happy for nigh unto a thousand years.

I'm not a practitioner of the Religio myself, but I know a bunch of folks who are.

[kiya]

Aha! I was sure there was a proper term for Roman recon, thank you for providing it. (Though thinking it over, I should probably have just asked you, on the principle that you'd probably know.)

I find that doing the best I can with the old rituals is satisfying; it's a . . . there's a form of connection in finding things that have been done this way for a long time, and will be done this way in the future. That sort of thing has a lot of gravitas for me, personally. (Is my gut feeling that this is part of what drives opposition to things like mandating masses in the vernacular in accord with your observations, by any chance?)

I think the belief that recreation and conuction of the rituals in the best way possible is fairly common across the reconstructionisms; it's in keeping with what I've seen written about Asatru as well. I don't think, however, that that point would make sense to the person over in nonfluffypagans, who also wanted to know why people don't just make up new gods rather than recognising the old ones or using old rituals.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I have some rather good books on Shinto (which caught my attention for similar reasons to why it caught yours, I think) and on the Irish material as well (as you might guess). We should trade reads sometime. :)

[kiya]

Indeed! Anything you're interested in that I might have stashed in my library? :}

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

It's always interesting to watch you lift up a panel on your skull to show us how the cogs inside fit together. ;-)

Would you give me a quick briefing sometime on some of the Kemetic (and other) terms you tend to use regularly? I haven't been listening to you discuss these things for long enough to grok them all.

(I might respond to content more later when I'm less tired...)

[kiya]

Build up a stockpile of sleep now, while you have a chance! ;)

I'll be happy to explain terms, if you'd ask me which ones you want me to expand. ;) I honestly don't know how much of my terminology is liable to be unfamiliar to people, because I'm not quite using the same language they are just to start with.

One I bet you don't know is Polish. ('dwojweirny') It means 'two faiths', and is a word for someone holding Christian and pagan beliefs simultaneously.

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

Besides the one you just defined, mostly just the Egyptian words. I can place *most* of the divine proper names, but the other terms escape me. (I may have seen some before, but I don't know the language nearly as well as the history.) Also, add "isfet" to the list you used in this post--I think I have a general sense of what you mean from other conversations, but I'd like to double-check that, since I'm pretty sure you use it a bit differently than other places I've seen it.

[kiya]

As raingnosis mentioned, fyrekat is putting together an ongoing glossary of Kemetic terms.

Hrrrm. I don't think there's much in this post that's Egyptian. Well, kyphi, which is an incense -- it's the incense I was burning when you came by a while back. Great stuff. Yum.

Parent and Beloved are . . . one's Parent is the ntjr of strongest influence over one, closest resonance. A Beloved is someone who's a consistent presence, but more of a modulation than a theme. (I don't know that speaking in music terms is any better. . . .)

Isfet is . . . hnur. I see a lot of people defining it as 'chaos', which irritates me; chaos is a part of existence. If one looks at the world as that-which-exists, that-which-is-named, isfet is erosion on that existence, that which unmakes it. Destructive chaos, dissolution. (If you're familiar with The Neverending Story, The Nothing has isfet resonances for me.) It breaks down the social order, separates people, sets them at unnecessary odds with each other. Cats and dogs, living together. . . .

It occurs to me that I was using ntjr/netjer in there too. Gods, roughly. :} This is in Banu's gloss, I believe, with variants and conjugational stuff.

[raingnosis.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for lilairen but you might be interested in checking out fyrekat's LJ as lately she's been posting Kemetic definitions. That might help you out.