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Side note: KJ's eighteen-month checkup went spendidly, she is a healthy and mighty babe. I am not healthy right now, but I have been stabbed gently in the chest, throat, head, wrists, and feet, and seem to be not coughing anymore? Also I have tea.
So,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jenett posted a questionnaire thing to her blog, and I read through it and was full of "Wow, a paganism religious questionnaire that doesn't suck horribly" and the sudden thought that I didn't know how to answer it anymore, because I'm in the middle of an intense period of religious turmoil. Which is, on one level, okay, and on other levels very upsetting.
I am answering the questionnaire as best as I can in order to see if I can sort my head out, because filing things neatly is good for thinkybrain and makes it stop panicking quite so much. Thinkybrain is full of panic.
Please describe briefly your Path:
Ha ha ha briefly ha ha ha no.
Here's the thing: I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Or, okay, I know what I'm doing, if I break it down into component bits, but the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts by a long, long shot. Synergetic effects are cool, but positive reinforcement can get ... ... large.
Okay. Briefly. Let's try briefly.
I am symbolically oriented with Egyptian reconstructionism, but my understanding of the process of reconstruction is both more organic and more localised than most reconstructionist approaches. I take my job as heretic Kemetic extremely seriously, and people seem to listen to what I have to say, possibly because I do my homework and am capable of translating intellectual into available.
I am a Craft student, and the more of that I do the less willing and able I am to talk about what it is that I am doing in anything resembling public.
I am developing a great affection for the religion of my ancestors, the Puritans. Of course, it's changed a good deal through the generations, but then again I am probably not someone they'd immediately recognise as kin either. (If you weren't aware that Unitarian Universalism is roughly descended from Puritanism, please take five and have the requisite good laugh. And then, when you're done with that, think about what that means in terms of religious evolution and try to take that back to your reconstruction, if any.)
... it's funny how things come in three parts, isn't it?
Please describe briefly how you practice it:
Cautiously. Hesitantly. Not as reliably as before KJ was born. With frequent prayers for clarity and true sight.
When did you first commit to your Path?
Fucked if I know.
Maybe I was eight, listening to the sermon and the Bible quotations and aware of the sense of the Holy Spirit come but not for me, looking through the stained glass, and wondering what it would be like to have the sort of god who personally wanted me, deciding that that was the minimum standard I wanted in religion.
Maybe I was fifteen, sitting on a hillside with a sword across my lap, addressing a goddess who spanned the sky and laughed deep belly laughs, pledging myself as Hers.
Maybe I was twenty-three or so, laughing as I found symbols chaining through that made sense to me, shaking a fist at that goddess and asking Her "Are you a netjeret? Which one are you?"
Maybe I was twenty-six, frowning at a god's declaration that I needed Craft studies to heal myself and finding in Etheric Anatomy the first description of auras that matched what I had perceived, in all of my reading, ever.
Maybe I was twenty-eight, come out of meditation work in my tools training with the awareness that what I wanted was to study more and deeper, not just find the tools to fix the basics of what was broken in my souls.
Maybe I was thirty, and facing the fact that the task that I had to address in order to demonstrate my fitness for the work that had been sent me required me to set aside the role and scope of interaction that was comfortable and secure and step outside my support in order to challenge the fitness of that support.
Maybe I was thirty-three, and smacked in the face with the awful, terrible, revealing truth of what the concatenations of my studies fundamentally mean, and found myself shaken to the core, filled with lust and terror, and squeezing my eyes shut to find the space to figure out how to make the damn thing work.
Maybe it was somewhen else: when I worked the largest spell of my life in order to conceive my child and prove there were prices I would not pay; when I fucked in the dark and candlelight in ritual dedication to a god; when I set forth to write something that worked; when when when. These aren't simple questions.
Every time I learn a little more about my Work, I have to decide if I'm going to pursue that task. Every damn time. Because it is full and awesome and horrible and too much, and there is nobody else to do it, because nobody else has my Name.
How is your practice different now than it was then?
Mu. There is too much.
What is the case now is that I do not do regular formal rituals just at the moment. I need to rebuild the time for it, but it's hard, especially with KJ. I cleanse, I purify, I align, and I work to build the groundwork that will support the things that I know I will need in the future. Regular ritual, much as I would love to be doing it, is a luxury that I can't fit in my mental budget.
I also need to redo my mental budget.
Is your practice different today than how you thought it would be back then?
Yes. If I had known what I was getting myself into I would probably not have started.
Does your Path and core belief system differ now than how it was when you first started?
Does a tadpole differ from a frog?
What is your heritage and how does this inform your Path?
Northern European moggy. I have known ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and Poland. When asked my ethnic background I tend to answer "half-Yankee, quarter Boston Irish, quarter Polish". I obviously have no idea where the unknown ancestors are from; while I'm open to the potential of wider ranges, I do not presume.
My bones are New England bones. My ancestors have been in these swamps and hills for roughly as long as there have been white people here, and it shows. I did not grow up here - I was born here and my parents moved away when I was an infant - but I returned to where I belonged as soon as I could.
I need to fit where I am. Which is a complicated, largely intuitive process, but it matters to be where I am, which is where I belong.
What are your main influences for your Path?
The inescapable and awful declarations of my heart's necessity.
Egyptian reconstruction, symbology, and similar.
Feri, especially as given to me by my teacher.
Whatever works.
Which do you do more: practice or research?
Nnh. To the extent that it's currently "research" that is a failure on my part.
Do you feel that one is more important than the other?
If you don't do anything, you're not doing anything.
If you don't know what the fuck you're doing, you get a lot of unanticipated consequences.
What values and ethics are important on your Path and in your practice?
"Ma'at is the force that brings people together into communities."
Without diversity there isn't much of anything, because existence depends on differentiation.
Speech is an action.
A semi-paraphrased quote for you: "The purpose of the Craft is to make you a good person."
What sort of cycles do you feel your practice goes through?
Stress-testing, smoothness, upheaval, fallow.
Currently largely in "fallow". Need to recognise and accept that and build something that I can then stress-test.
What is one of the greatest obstacles or struggles you have had to over come?
Separation of the values of the outside from my own work. It's an ongoing process, it's not like I'm up to the Feynman level of "What do you care what other people think?"
I am myself, not other people; I need to enact what is myself, not the fears, agitations, and damage of other people. This is very, very hard.
How do you see yourself practicing in ten years?
More reliably. :P
More seriously: I hope to have built something stable, functional, and reasonably reliable. I hope to be able to share my reconstruction-flavored work publically, partly because I think it valuable, partly because I want error-checking and a single person's lifetime is too short to run enough iterations. My mystical and Craft work I expect to remain closely-held.
How do you incorporate your practice into your life?
Breathe.
This is actually the thing that I hammer on, because it's easy to do Big Ritual and then just put it down.
I don't put it down.
Has walking your Path changed you as a person?
I have carved away a great deal of the portions of this stone that do not resemble an elephant.
Do you consider yourself to be a priest/ess? How so?
At best, in training. To a certain extent, I fight this all the way, and Neb.y mocks me for it, but knows that He won the logic trap.
The Mystery I am wrestling with makes this notably easier in many ways. It's just that the Mystery itself is pants-wettingly terrifying, so as help it mostly just moves the problem.
A witch? How so?
Occasionally. I'm more likely to say "kitchen witch".
I want to live in the phase space between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. (Nanny gets laid more.)
A shaman? How so?
I find this particular concept kind of culturally problematic, seeing as I have very little to do with Siberian tribal practices. I will bow out of it, but note that some of the techniques I use are what has been called shamanistic in environments that are less twitchy about the language than I am.
Which matters more: getting the vocabulary right or the actual practice of what we are trying to define?
What's the difference?
One of the most profound things anyone ever said to you was:
"You can only shine what you have."
A defining moment on your Path was:
The bit where I realised that Set had logic-gamed me into priest training. He's a fuckface bastard.
Have you ever taken a “leap of faith”?
Quite a few, despite not being any good at the "faith" thing.
(Perceive first. Then believe.)
Please tell us something stupid, reckless or embarrassing you did once in your practice:
Honestly, I don't have any really good stories I can think of at the moment. I did an offering meal for Neb.y once and poured way too much strong drink for it. Since Kemetic offerings are shared with the god, I had to drink the lot of it. The impression I got was that He thought that was fucking hilarious.
What is the most frustrating thing about your Path?
The amount of it I have to do on my own.
Have you ever been frightened?
... please reread the above.
Can you perform ritual without a script?
Yes. Technically in Egyptian stuff one's supposed to read it but I have the stuff I used regularly memorised.
Have you ever preformed spontaneous magick/spellcraft?
Yes. I don't do much that's explicitly magic though.
What are you still exploring or experimenting with?
THE WHOLE FUCKING THING. WAUGH.
What (or whom) are you the most committed to in your practice and on your Path?
You know, as I think about this I suspect it probably boils down to "What is needful?" I keep taking on tasks that need done.
Why they need done varies - personal need, social need, religious need, "Fuck it someone needs to do it and nobody else is" need - but the basic thing seems to be the same.
Ritual tools are …
Objects?
... I'm at a loss.
Magickal tools are …
Nouns.
... not any better.
The one thing you can’t do without is:
Breath.
Seeking personal power is …
Inevitable. Necessary. Treacherous.
Power is I-am in motion. If one seeks self-fulfillment one will necessarily produce a quest for power. If, however, one is afraid and seeks protection, that power will seep through those cracks and can rapidly become toxic.
Politics and your Path are …
I am allergic to politics-as-religion or religion-as-politics.
This does not mean that my religion does not inform my politics, but it's my responsibility to deal with that in ways that do not presume shared creed or practice.
One thing you wish people would understand about your Path and/or practice is:
That whatever your generic image of "pagan" is, it's wrong. Probably in more ways than we can tot up without a ledger, so whatever.
(And I have been staring blankly at someone who has been arguing that Aleister Crowley didn't have the True Paganness about him, and I suspect I don't either, so mostly I just feel kind of "Oh, fuck off" about this entire concept at the moment.)
Do you teach?
Mostly accidentally.
I appear to be really good at taking academic-level concepts about Egyptian religion and transforming them into instructive parables, examples, illustrative concepts, and so on.
Which leaves me with a feeling that if what I want to do is have people doing things right by my standards I may have to explain them.
What do you feel is the role of clergy in modern Paganism and Heathenism?
Complicated. Also, for the most part, not well thought-out.
I deal with an ancient culture in which priests were the servants in the houses of the gods. They went out, took care of the gods and made sure that end of the connection stuff was working right, and everyone else did different work. They didn't do weddings. They didn't provide counselling services. They didn't do all the stuff that people influenced by Protestant Christianity think that clergy are supposed to do as a side-effect of being clergy.
Modern pagan culture has a lot of "I am my own priest! I don't need an intercessor to talk to deity for me!" which is all well and good, but, y'know, claiming that's a big important difference from Christianity (like most of the people who say this do) is missing the point of, y'know, Protestantism.
I think the whole thing could do with a bit more thinky thoughts.
When the Veil (or Hedge!) is thin, how does that feel to you?
Quiet. Oddly pressure-shifted.
What entities do you work with most? (ancestors, gods, fae etc)
In an active sense, Neb.y Set, Hetharu, and Wepwawet govern the three realms of my Work (look, there's that three again). Khnum looks over me and the care of my self and soul. I keep shrines for Lilitu and Ganesha, but that is more in the realm of "I need to do Them honor" than "I have an active serious relationship with Them". Other relationships are far more complex to try to talk about, so I won't.
I have a domovoi. I am concerned with local landwights. I honor my ancestors.
What is your relationship with the Land?
I try to pay attention to what the local wights prefer. I need to be in this geographical region. I try to listen to its lessons, because I know it has them; I'm not always that good at it.
The main purpose of ritual is:
Stable maintenance of relationships between components of the cosmos, which can include such things as "me" and "this other bit of me".
The most important aspect of ritual is:
Functionality.
What is the purpose of divination/dowsing (or whichever for of augury you use)?
Providing a space into which the mind can release the answers it contains. Perhaps picking up on subtle other data, too, but the former is the biggie.
What was the most difficult book you ever read? (Either difficult to understand or hard to face what it said or both)
Jan Assmann's The Mind of Egypt, which I should read again now that I know enough to possibly understand it, as his Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt I could actually parse and it set my mind on fire.
He is a genius. I love him. He is of the Pedantic German School.
What book do you recommend the most to others?
Querencia.
... for religious books I have a standard set of Kemetic recs and a standard set of Feri ones, too.
What is you favourite podcast (if any) and favourite blog (other than your own)?
I'm not currently following much of either, honestly.
If you could impart only one last piece of wisdom or knowledge, or share one experience with the world at large, what would it be?
... I don't know how to talk about ka theology yet in a tidy fashion, there are too many words and I don't know it well enough to make fewer of them.
"Love your vital energy and treat it well" sums it up but doesn't actually convey the thing in the slightest.
Please finish this meme with a picture, image or photograph of some sort:
No. I'm too sick to scramble for something. I have a graphic design project in my head right now, maybe someday I'll do it.
So,
jenett posted a questionnaire thing to her blog, and I read through it and was full of "Wow, a paganism religious questionnaire that doesn't suck horribly" and the sudden thought that I didn't know how to answer it anymore, because I'm in the middle of an intense period of religious turmoil. Which is, on one level, okay, and on other levels very upsetting.I am answering the questionnaire as best as I can in order to see if I can sort my head out, because filing things neatly is good for thinkybrain and makes it stop panicking quite so much. Thinkybrain is full of panic.
Please describe briefly your Path:
Ha ha ha briefly ha ha ha no.
Here's the thing: I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Or, okay, I know what I'm doing, if I break it down into component bits, but the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts by a long, long shot. Synergetic effects are cool, but positive reinforcement can get ... ... large.
Okay. Briefly. Let's try briefly.
I am symbolically oriented with Egyptian reconstructionism, but my understanding of the process of reconstruction is both more organic and more localised than most reconstructionist approaches. I take my job as heretic Kemetic extremely seriously, and people seem to listen to what I have to say, possibly because I do my homework and am capable of translating intellectual into available.
I am a Craft student, and the more of that I do the less willing and able I am to talk about what it is that I am doing in anything resembling public.
I am developing a great affection for the religion of my ancestors, the Puritans. Of course, it's changed a good deal through the generations, but then again I am probably not someone they'd immediately recognise as kin either. (If you weren't aware that Unitarian Universalism is roughly descended from Puritanism, please take five and have the requisite good laugh. And then, when you're done with that, think about what that means in terms of religious evolution and try to take that back to your reconstruction, if any.)
... it's funny how things come in three parts, isn't it?
Please describe briefly how you practice it:
Cautiously. Hesitantly. Not as reliably as before KJ was born. With frequent prayers for clarity and true sight.
When did you first commit to your Path?
Fucked if I know.
Maybe I was eight, listening to the sermon and the Bible quotations and aware of the sense of the Holy Spirit come but not for me, looking through the stained glass, and wondering what it would be like to have the sort of god who personally wanted me, deciding that that was the minimum standard I wanted in religion.
Maybe I was fifteen, sitting on a hillside with a sword across my lap, addressing a goddess who spanned the sky and laughed deep belly laughs, pledging myself as Hers.
Maybe I was twenty-three or so, laughing as I found symbols chaining through that made sense to me, shaking a fist at that goddess and asking Her "Are you a netjeret? Which one are you?"
Maybe I was twenty-six, frowning at a god's declaration that I needed Craft studies to heal myself and finding in Etheric Anatomy the first description of auras that matched what I had perceived, in all of my reading, ever.
Maybe I was twenty-eight, come out of meditation work in my tools training with the awareness that what I wanted was to study more and deeper, not just find the tools to fix the basics of what was broken in my souls.
Maybe I was thirty, and facing the fact that the task that I had to address in order to demonstrate my fitness for the work that had been sent me required me to set aside the role and scope of interaction that was comfortable and secure and step outside my support in order to challenge the fitness of that support.
Maybe I was thirty-three, and smacked in the face with the awful, terrible, revealing truth of what the concatenations of my studies fundamentally mean, and found myself shaken to the core, filled with lust and terror, and squeezing my eyes shut to find the space to figure out how to make the damn thing work.
Maybe it was somewhen else: when I worked the largest spell of my life in order to conceive my child and prove there were prices I would not pay; when I fucked in the dark and candlelight in ritual dedication to a god; when I set forth to write something that worked; when when when. These aren't simple questions.
Every time I learn a little more about my Work, I have to decide if I'm going to pursue that task. Every damn time. Because it is full and awesome and horrible and too much, and there is nobody else to do it, because nobody else has my Name.
How is your practice different now than it was then?
Mu. There is too much.
What is the case now is that I do not do regular formal rituals just at the moment. I need to rebuild the time for it, but it's hard, especially with KJ. I cleanse, I purify, I align, and I work to build the groundwork that will support the things that I know I will need in the future. Regular ritual, much as I would love to be doing it, is a luxury that I can't fit in my mental budget.
I also need to redo my mental budget.
Is your practice different today than how you thought it would be back then?
Yes. If I had known what I was getting myself into I would probably not have started.
Does your Path and core belief system differ now than how it was when you first started?
Does a tadpole differ from a frog?
What is your heritage and how does this inform your Path?
Northern European moggy. I have known ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and Poland. When asked my ethnic background I tend to answer "half-Yankee, quarter Boston Irish, quarter Polish". I obviously have no idea where the unknown ancestors are from; while I'm open to the potential of wider ranges, I do not presume.
My bones are New England bones. My ancestors have been in these swamps and hills for roughly as long as there have been white people here, and it shows. I did not grow up here - I was born here and my parents moved away when I was an infant - but I returned to where I belonged as soon as I could.
I need to fit where I am. Which is a complicated, largely intuitive process, but it matters to be where I am, which is where I belong.
What are your main influences for your Path?
The inescapable and awful declarations of my heart's necessity.
Egyptian reconstruction, symbology, and similar.
Feri, especially as given to me by my teacher.
Whatever works.
Which do you do more: practice or research?
Nnh. To the extent that it's currently "research" that is a failure on my part.
Do you feel that one is more important than the other?
If you don't do anything, you're not doing anything.
If you don't know what the fuck you're doing, you get a lot of unanticipated consequences.
What values and ethics are important on your Path and in your practice?
"Ma'at is the force that brings people together into communities."
Without diversity there isn't much of anything, because existence depends on differentiation.
Speech is an action.
A semi-paraphrased quote for you: "The purpose of the Craft is to make you a good person."
What sort of cycles do you feel your practice goes through?
Stress-testing, smoothness, upheaval, fallow.
Currently largely in "fallow". Need to recognise and accept that and build something that I can then stress-test.
What is one of the greatest obstacles or struggles you have had to over come?
Separation of the values of the outside from my own work. It's an ongoing process, it's not like I'm up to the Feynman level of "What do you care what other people think?"
I am myself, not other people; I need to enact what is myself, not the fears, agitations, and damage of other people. This is very, very hard.
How do you see yourself practicing in ten years?
More reliably. :P
More seriously: I hope to have built something stable, functional, and reasonably reliable. I hope to be able to share my reconstruction-flavored work publically, partly because I think it valuable, partly because I want error-checking and a single person's lifetime is too short to run enough iterations. My mystical and Craft work I expect to remain closely-held.
How do you incorporate your practice into your life?
Breathe.
This is actually the thing that I hammer on, because it's easy to do Big Ritual and then just put it down.
I don't put it down.
Has walking your Path changed you as a person?
I have carved away a great deal of the portions of this stone that do not resemble an elephant.
Do you consider yourself to be a priest/ess? How so?
At best, in training. To a certain extent, I fight this all the way, and Neb.y mocks me for it, but knows that He won the logic trap.
The Mystery I am wrestling with makes this notably easier in many ways. It's just that the Mystery itself is pants-wettingly terrifying, so as help it mostly just moves the problem.
A witch? How so?
Occasionally. I'm more likely to say "kitchen witch".
I want to live in the phase space between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. (Nanny gets laid more.)
A shaman? How so?
I find this particular concept kind of culturally problematic, seeing as I have very little to do with Siberian tribal practices. I will bow out of it, but note that some of the techniques I use are what has been called shamanistic in environments that are less twitchy about the language than I am.
Which matters more: getting the vocabulary right or the actual practice of what we are trying to define?
What's the difference?
One of the most profound things anyone ever said to you was:
"You can only shine what you have."
A defining moment on your Path was:
The bit where I realised that Set had logic-gamed me into priest training. He's a fuckface bastard.
Have you ever taken a “leap of faith”?
Quite a few, despite not being any good at the "faith" thing.
(Perceive first. Then believe.)
Please tell us something stupid, reckless or embarrassing you did once in your practice:
Honestly, I don't have any really good stories I can think of at the moment. I did an offering meal for Neb.y once and poured way too much strong drink for it. Since Kemetic offerings are shared with the god, I had to drink the lot of it. The impression I got was that He thought that was fucking hilarious.
What is the most frustrating thing about your Path?
The amount of it I have to do on my own.
Have you ever been frightened?
... please reread the above.
Can you perform ritual without a script?
Yes. Technically in Egyptian stuff one's supposed to read it but I have the stuff I used regularly memorised.
Have you ever preformed spontaneous magick/spellcraft?
Yes. I don't do much that's explicitly magic though.
What are you still exploring or experimenting with?
THE WHOLE FUCKING THING. WAUGH.
What (or whom) are you the most committed to in your practice and on your Path?
You know, as I think about this I suspect it probably boils down to "What is needful?" I keep taking on tasks that need done.
Why they need done varies - personal need, social need, religious need, "Fuck it someone needs to do it and nobody else is" need - but the basic thing seems to be the same.
Ritual tools are …
Objects?
... I'm at a loss.
Magickal tools are …
Nouns.
... not any better.
The one thing you can’t do without is:
Breath.
Seeking personal power is …
Inevitable. Necessary. Treacherous.
Power is I-am in motion. If one seeks self-fulfillment one will necessarily produce a quest for power. If, however, one is afraid and seeks protection, that power will seep through those cracks and can rapidly become toxic.
Politics and your Path are …
I am allergic to politics-as-religion or religion-as-politics.
This does not mean that my religion does not inform my politics, but it's my responsibility to deal with that in ways that do not presume shared creed or practice.
One thing you wish people would understand about your Path and/or practice is:
That whatever your generic image of "pagan" is, it's wrong. Probably in more ways than we can tot up without a ledger, so whatever.
(And I have been staring blankly at someone who has been arguing that Aleister Crowley didn't have the True Paganness about him, and I suspect I don't either, so mostly I just feel kind of "Oh, fuck off" about this entire concept at the moment.)
Do you teach?
Mostly accidentally.
I appear to be really good at taking academic-level concepts about Egyptian religion and transforming them into instructive parables, examples, illustrative concepts, and so on.
Which leaves me with a feeling that if what I want to do is have people doing things right by my standards I may have to explain them.
What do you feel is the role of clergy in modern Paganism and Heathenism?
Complicated. Also, for the most part, not well thought-out.
I deal with an ancient culture in which priests were the servants in the houses of the gods. They went out, took care of the gods and made sure that end of the connection stuff was working right, and everyone else did different work. They didn't do weddings. They didn't provide counselling services. They didn't do all the stuff that people influenced by Protestant Christianity think that clergy are supposed to do as a side-effect of being clergy.
Modern pagan culture has a lot of "I am my own priest! I don't need an intercessor to talk to deity for me!" which is all well and good, but, y'know, claiming that's a big important difference from Christianity (like most of the people who say this do) is missing the point of, y'know, Protestantism.
I think the whole thing could do with a bit more thinky thoughts.
When the Veil (or Hedge!) is thin, how does that feel to you?
Quiet. Oddly pressure-shifted.
What entities do you work with most? (ancestors, gods, fae etc)
In an active sense, Neb.y Set, Hetharu, and Wepwawet govern the three realms of my Work (look, there's that three again). Khnum looks over me and the care of my self and soul. I keep shrines for Lilitu and Ganesha, but that is more in the realm of "I need to do Them honor" than "I have an active serious relationship with Them". Other relationships are far more complex to try to talk about, so I won't.
I have a domovoi. I am concerned with local landwights. I honor my ancestors.
What is your relationship with the Land?
I try to pay attention to what the local wights prefer. I need to be in this geographical region. I try to listen to its lessons, because I know it has them; I'm not always that good at it.
The main purpose of ritual is:
Stable maintenance of relationships between components of the cosmos, which can include such things as "me" and "this other bit of me".
The most important aspect of ritual is:
Functionality.
What is the purpose of divination/dowsing (or whichever for of augury you use)?
Providing a space into which the mind can release the answers it contains. Perhaps picking up on subtle other data, too, but the former is the biggie.
What was the most difficult book you ever read? (Either difficult to understand or hard to face what it said or both)
Jan Assmann's The Mind of Egypt, which I should read again now that I know enough to possibly understand it, as his Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt I could actually parse and it set my mind on fire.
He is a genius. I love him. He is of the Pedantic German School.
What book do you recommend the most to others?
Querencia.
... for religious books I have a standard set of Kemetic recs and a standard set of Feri ones, too.
What is you favourite podcast (if any) and favourite blog (other than your own)?
I'm not currently following much of either, honestly.
If you could impart only one last piece of wisdom or knowledge, or share one experience with the world at large, what would it be?
... I don't know how to talk about ka theology yet in a tidy fashion, there are too many words and I don't know it well enough to make fewer of them.
"Love your vital energy and treat it well" sums it up but doesn't actually convey the thing in the slightest.
Please finish this meme with a picture, image or photograph of some sort:
No. I'm too sick to scramble for something. I have a graphic design project in my head right now, maybe someday I'll do it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
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I am delighted by the bits where, when we're in agreement, you are so much gloriously more concise.
And there's a bit about your breath comments that made a whole bunch of the post I've been sitting on about betrayals and expectations fall into place. I anticipate it'll be part of tomorrow's Work.
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Breath, huh? Interesting.
(My standard advice to people in turmoil is "Breathe". I should probably have a breath icon. This is the closest I got.)
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Breathing for me is the knife edge of possible betrayal, because I can never be totally certain that going "breathe more, better, more gloriously" is actually going to *work*.
It's a lot better now after all the Feldenkrais work and after managing a year without picking up a serious lung funk. But twenty years of asthma response builds a lot of habits.
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The wooden disk version of this icon was drawn using only a rule and a pair of compasses, appropriate for its symbolism.
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That's beautiful. Really, truly, in ways I don't think I can express.
We should get together soon.
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This.
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Standard Kemetic recs:
Temple of the Cosmos, Naydler
Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, Hornung
Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, Meeks and Favard-Meeks
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Stable maintenance of relationships between components of the cosmos, which can include such things as "me" and "this other bit of me".
*Oh.*
Well, that certainly helps this atheist, who has been flailing around for the last few weeks trying to figure out why her brain is screaming "RITUALS. GET YOU SOME" at her...
(Now I have to figure out how to appropriately apply that information. That will probably take at least several more weeks for the basic framework, anyway, unless someone happens to feed me more bolt-out-of-the-blue insights. ;)
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Just picking out one nifty bit out many...I very much experience power as kinesthetic. My feet solid on the ground, the ability to move... (That's just for me - I don't intend to come across as ableist.)