Sex, drugs, blood, and death

[kiya]

There are the hints here and there in the history, in the myths, the recorded information.

Arguments about whether Nymphaea caerula is psychoactive. The intensity and intoxication of scent. Hetharu's revitalising sexuality and Her drunkenness, twined with Sekhmet's cauterising rage, plague and purification. The other netjer particularly known for drinking to excess would be Set, with His chaos, destruction, and (often frustrated) male sexuality. Festival women flipping their skirts and horrifying the Greeks. Sexuality, death, fertility, linked through Asar. Compendiums of spells surrounding death. The wailing of the mourning women, mud-covered, clothes-ripped. Blood taboo. Erotic poetry. Nefertiti dancing for the Aten; girls dancing for the Nisut, for the netjerw, wearing cords about their waists and images of Bes on their thighs.

Mysteries lost, like so many of the ancient ones were.

I find myself looking at modernisms that dig into a form of those mysteries and seeing ways that they fit, the threads that could weave into the shadows behind the well-lit and respectable and give it its depth.

It was Set who shoved me into Feri.

Netjer is never perfectly straightforward.

Comments

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

I understand some of what you are saying. The Mysteries are that, for a reason. Nymphaea caerula is a plant that has captured my imagination for a very long time. Is it psychoactive. No. Not by itself in alcohol. I have tinctred it, and the chemical constiuency is almost precisely the same as ginko biloba, which is a vaso diolator. It also acts as a rather floral version of viagra. That being said, and adding to it the idea of scent, which aromatherapy-wise can also affect consciousness. What Western minds do not understand but Ancient ones surely knew, is that you cannot separate mind from body, or those two from spirit and expect a true joy in life, a true understanding on a metaphysical, esoteric or exoteric level.

The lotus was all about sex and rebirth and renewal, and beauty, and that was on just a symbological level. There is something that is very important that many modern minds dont grasp, and until they do, they will be completely missing the point. That point is that each and every plant, each and every living thing has a governing spirit, a consciousness. That governing consciousness or overspirit, like the Names, has attributes, it has a Netjerii, and some even say that these spirits ARE Netjerii. Anyway, when you approach those things on a level of honoring that sprit, and when you do it from an approach through ALL the senses, or sensuality if you will, something happens - you open up and a whole new undestanding opens up that you never knew existed. Not everyone can understand that, not everyone can appreciate that, at least not in this modern era -but I think the ancients did. The way of connecting to the Divine through Dance, through symbol, through the traditions and the taboos - these serve as a sort of trigger in essence. It's sort of like the 100th monkey. Intuitively, we come from the womb sensing these things and the nature of the Spirit invites us to explore, for there is absolutely no other way, except by direct experience, to come to understanding of these Mysteries. You cannot simply tell them throuhg vocalizations or writing it down. It must be experienced in order to be understood and embraced.

So IMHO, dig away. You will find what parts of the urban legends about Ancient Kemet actually have credence, and some are just absurd. I personally think that it is a definite part of the process, and there are really no shortcuts to be had.