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More attempts to comb out my brain, meanwhile. This will be written through the haze of horrific headache, so please bear with me if you want to bother reading it at all.
Brief context summary: in ancient times, most mystery traditions were private offshoots of ordinary religious practice, undertaken by the particularly devoted to that set of stuff, the particularly interested, or whatever else. They existed in the context of a surrounding culture that took their raw assumptions as a given and provided what amounts to specialist knowledge.
One of the reasons I keep hammering on exoteric, common-people religion in a Kemetic context despite being an incurable mystic myself is that I feel the need for the groundwork. Without the construction of a basic symbolic matrix to operate within, it's just too damn easy to come unmoored. Without a community that understands that symbolic matrix, it's also too damn easy to go cackling (to snag a useful Pratchettism), and nobody's bloody qualified to notice. Especially in a context where religious practice is non-mainstream, denigrated, or both, and those people who pursue divine intimacy are considered to default to some subset of mad, delusional, or brainwashed.
And part of the point of mystery religion is that not everyone needs it (or even wants it). I mean, one can make a serious case for Christianity in its most ancient form being a mystery religion (complete with an initiatory priesthood, even) but that's far from a common conception of it. The stuff that's generally accessible, the straightforward baseline for presenting the context in which the esoteric portions can take place, has a whole heck of a lot more people tracking it than either the core mystery work or the miscellaneous traditions of esoteric practice which have grown up in that context and depend on it for their framework and continuation.
That's another reason I keep harping on trying to build something exoteric and accessible. Personal devotions and similar experiences are all well and good, but they are fundamentally, well, personal, private things. I can't instruct you-generic in the mysteries you need, because I may not have those mysteries in the first place, and I may not know how to get you there. But the ordinary practice stuff, the baseline from which someone can build their own mystical practice in shared praxis, that's stuff that is a) constructable from a solid basis in lore (unlike much mystery work) b) necessary to make a safe container to pursue whatever mystery work might follow and c) ... the stuff that's most broadly relevant and necessary to someone who just wants to have religion, not make religion their life.
Religious stuff is pretty essential to my life, yes, but I'm aware that I am a minority in several ways on that account, and that there are people who might well do handily with some of the structure I work in who don't have any particular godbotheredness about them that would incline them to do the fucking awful amount of work required, and ... I don't think people should have to do graduate-level work in order to have a framework, y'know?
I don't have to do graduate-level work to fucking go to church, join a community, share in the services, and have a cuppa tea. I don't have to do the heavy lifting. It exists. I can go in, the sermon is generally about ma'at (as it happens, though it doesn't use those words or that symbology at all), there is music, there are people I recognise now and who recognise me, KJ is coming to enjoy the nursery at last, and it all exists. It exists without me, it doesn't require my personal allegiance, and if that were all I needed I could get it.
Someone who needs something at that level and who is recon-inclined is mostly SOL. Not only is there not a handy downtown church but there aren't really handy books. (I think Asatru has a couple, and Hellenismos had Old Stones, New Temples which is I believe now OOP.) The occasional ritual book, maybe, but that's not the same as a cosmogenic exegesis that can provide the living framework.
(The tangent generator in my head went off pursuing Blodeuwedd just now. Rather than chase that down I will note it here and have done with it.)
(The other tangent is, of course, that this tension between the esoteric and exoteric forces of religion causes a fuckton of angst and drama in religious witchcraft communities. This is not what this post is about, but given the recent angst and drama I want to note that this is not what this post is about so that nobody goes through it trying to comb out secret messages.)
So.
Historically speaking, I was working on exoteric construction stuff. My esoteric practice, while extensive, and all my personal mysticism, these were private matters, pursued out of personal need, not as part of laying the foundation for community that mattered to me as a matter of, for lack of better phrasing, public policy. The lines are not neat and tidy, and never have been; the synergy between the two drives some of the places and ways I have patched gaps, and the external stuff provides the cradle in which the internal processes can rest, as it should be.
I don't want public stuff in my esoterism any more than I want public stuff in my sex life; that's an intimacy that I want to reserve for relevant parties. So there has always been a line there, governing things I wanted to say publically and things I didn't. But - because there is not a functional community for this sort of thing - there has also been the sense that I am out on my own in the dark which, while fundamentally okay in a lot of ways due to my mental makeup, is a bit on the stressful side, and means shortages of useful error-check.
The thing about that falling down is not that I've hit a mystery thing that I have to share; it's that I've hit a mystery thing that can underlie the exoteric work, like I uncovered an archaeological treasure and now need to go back and study the architecture again to decipher it. I've hit a mystery thing that can be shared, rather than the intimate and personal thing that I was looking for; something that has a thread of continuity.
I've also hit a mystery thing that is deeply attested in the lore, to an extent that I would be shocked if something similar was not part of ancient practice as, again, esoteric stuff.
As lines and boundaries go, this is kind of terrifying. I grasp the lore-rooted stuff pretty deeply now, after steeping myself in it for the better part of a decade, I can see how it all works, how it falls out, the full shape of it. And ... this is what it is to study the Mysteries, to finally find the one that opens like a lotus to reveal one's personal dawn, and to be shaken to the core with the awesome and terrible reality of it.
I was not looking for this. I wanted to build the exoteric and hold the esoteric private, but that does not actually work anymore, because having this understanding is like, after a lifetime, suddenly achieving stereophonic sound and depth perception. The work I have done before is not wrong, it is just flat and need to be revisited, shaded, considered with its parallax, and have its perspective tweaked.
And at the same time as having this thing, which I know as well as a mystery can be known on the theoretical level, I ... kind of resent having it. Not because I think it is a bad thing - far from it, I am fucking infatuated - but because it almost feels like its pursuit could be a betrayal of the ordinary and accessible that I think is so important.
But perhaps - and this only just occurred to me while I was writing, which is about sixty percent of why I'm writing this crap down - the exoteric can't be done properly, can't have its structure stabilised and built securely - without that mystery at the core. Not that everyone needs to know it or know that it's there (see the comment about Christianity as a mystery religion) but that everything emerges from that knowledge, everything unfolds from there, because in the first light moments the whole of creation is revealed.
I think I had parts of that, the way everything emerges from the knowledge, when I started working on ka theology. I think I have a bit more of it now.
The more I work through this, the easier it will be to lay foundations. In the end it all comes down to masonry.
(Kala kala kala.)
Brief context summary: in ancient times, most mystery traditions were private offshoots of ordinary religious practice, undertaken by the particularly devoted to that set of stuff, the particularly interested, or whatever else. They existed in the context of a surrounding culture that took their raw assumptions as a given and provided what amounts to specialist knowledge.
One of the reasons I keep hammering on exoteric, common-people religion in a Kemetic context despite being an incurable mystic myself is that I feel the need for the groundwork. Without the construction of a basic symbolic matrix to operate within, it's just too damn easy to come unmoored. Without a community that understands that symbolic matrix, it's also too damn easy to go cackling (to snag a useful Pratchettism), and nobody's bloody qualified to notice. Especially in a context where religious practice is non-mainstream, denigrated, or both, and those people who pursue divine intimacy are considered to default to some subset of mad, delusional, or brainwashed.
And part of the point of mystery religion is that not everyone needs it (or even wants it). I mean, one can make a serious case for Christianity in its most ancient form being a mystery religion (complete with an initiatory priesthood, even) but that's far from a common conception of it. The stuff that's generally accessible, the straightforward baseline for presenting the context in which the esoteric portions can take place, has a whole heck of a lot more people tracking it than either the core mystery work or the miscellaneous traditions of esoteric practice which have grown up in that context and depend on it for their framework and continuation.
That's another reason I keep harping on trying to build something exoteric and accessible. Personal devotions and similar experiences are all well and good, but they are fundamentally, well, personal, private things. I can't instruct you-generic in the mysteries you need, because I may not have those mysteries in the first place, and I may not know how to get you there. But the ordinary practice stuff, the baseline from which someone can build their own mystical practice in shared praxis, that's stuff that is a) constructable from a solid basis in lore (unlike much mystery work) b) necessary to make a safe container to pursue whatever mystery work might follow and c) ... the stuff that's most broadly relevant and necessary to someone who just wants to have religion, not make religion their life.
Religious stuff is pretty essential to my life, yes, but I'm aware that I am a minority in several ways on that account, and that there are people who might well do handily with some of the structure I work in who don't have any particular godbotheredness about them that would incline them to do the fucking awful amount of work required, and ... I don't think people should have to do graduate-level work in order to have a framework, y'know?
I don't have to do graduate-level work to fucking go to church, join a community, share in the services, and have a cuppa tea. I don't have to do the heavy lifting. It exists. I can go in, the sermon is generally about ma'at (as it happens, though it doesn't use those words or that symbology at all), there is music, there are people I recognise now and who recognise me, KJ is coming to enjoy the nursery at last, and it all exists. It exists without me, it doesn't require my personal allegiance, and if that were all I needed I could get it.
Someone who needs something at that level and who is recon-inclined is mostly SOL. Not only is there not a handy downtown church but there aren't really handy books. (I think Asatru has a couple, and Hellenismos had Old Stones, New Temples which is I believe now OOP.) The occasional ritual book, maybe, but that's not the same as a cosmogenic exegesis that can provide the living framework.
(The tangent generator in my head went off pursuing Blodeuwedd just now. Rather than chase that down I will note it here and have done with it.)
(The other tangent is, of course, that this tension between the esoteric and exoteric forces of religion causes a fuckton of angst and drama in religious witchcraft communities. This is not what this post is about, but given the recent angst and drama I want to note that this is not what this post is about so that nobody goes through it trying to comb out secret messages.)
So.
Historically speaking, I was working on exoteric construction stuff. My esoteric practice, while extensive, and all my personal mysticism, these were private matters, pursued out of personal need, not as part of laying the foundation for community that mattered to me as a matter of, for lack of better phrasing, public policy. The lines are not neat and tidy, and never have been; the synergy between the two drives some of the places and ways I have patched gaps, and the external stuff provides the cradle in which the internal processes can rest, as it should be.
I don't want public stuff in my esoterism any more than I want public stuff in my sex life; that's an intimacy that I want to reserve for relevant parties. So there has always been a line there, governing things I wanted to say publically and things I didn't. But - because there is not a functional community for this sort of thing - there has also been the sense that I am out on my own in the dark which, while fundamentally okay in a lot of ways due to my mental makeup, is a bit on the stressful side, and means shortages of useful error-check.
The thing about that falling down is not that I've hit a mystery thing that I have to share; it's that I've hit a mystery thing that can underlie the exoteric work, like I uncovered an archaeological treasure and now need to go back and study the architecture again to decipher it. I've hit a mystery thing that can be shared, rather than the intimate and personal thing that I was looking for; something that has a thread of continuity.
I've also hit a mystery thing that is deeply attested in the lore, to an extent that I would be shocked if something similar was not part of ancient practice as, again, esoteric stuff.
As lines and boundaries go, this is kind of terrifying. I grasp the lore-rooted stuff pretty deeply now, after steeping myself in it for the better part of a decade, I can see how it all works, how it falls out, the full shape of it. And ... this is what it is to study the Mysteries, to finally find the one that opens like a lotus to reveal one's personal dawn, and to be shaken to the core with the awesome and terrible reality of it.
I was not looking for this. I wanted to build the exoteric and hold the esoteric private, but that does not actually work anymore, because having this understanding is like, after a lifetime, suddenly achieving stereophonic sound and depth perception. The work I have done before is not wrong, it is just flat and need to be revisited, shaded, considered with its parallax, and have its perspective tweaked.
And at the same time as having this thing, which I know as well as a mystery can be known on the theoretical level, I ... kind of resent having it. Not because I think it is a bad thing - far from it, I am fucking infatuated - but because it almost feels like its pursuit could be a betrayal of the ordinary and accessible that I think is so important.
But perhaps - and this only just occurred to me while I was writing, which is about sixty percent of why I'm writing this crap down - the exoteric can't be done properly, can't have its structure stabilised and built securely - without that mystery at the core. Not that everyone needs to know it or know that it's there (see the comment about Christianity as a mystery religion) but that everything emerges from that knowledge, everything unfolds from there, because in the first light moments the whole of creation is revealed.
I think I had parts of that, the way everything emerges from the knowledge, when I started working on ka theology. I think I have a bit more of it now.
The more I work through this, the easier it will be to lay foundations. In the end it all comes down to masonry.
(Kala kala kala.)
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From:
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Aset spoke to me about ritual and about what it means. She said,"How do you perform this ritual if you do not know what it means?" Then She preceded to tell me a few things mostly about the First Time and the symbolism of the altar, the rite, purity and the ka. A "look behind what you are doing because there are more to the motions than the motions themselves" message.
For my book on Aset I've been trying to get things together to do the exoteric work and I got hit with some of Aset's Mysteries. I was planning on this book being more of an intro book, but it isn't turning out that way.
For Hellenismos, I think there are two other books out that are good.
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Mine just keeps gently pointing out, "It's about what people need to get them home." But then, that's Him.
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I believe (from what I have read on A&J and elsewhere) it was mostly Fitch (as a public face) who developed the Pagan Way materials that eventually grew into a formal teaching group, yet left all their stuff in public domain ... essentially, PW and the various CW groups are the biggest basis for what we have as an exoteric common core.
So, as I say - building an exoteric common core is possible, practical, and useful.
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It's interesting as someone who is caught in the tension of exoteric vs esoteric religious witchcraft practices, to see it put so well that, well, on our side of things, we kind of have it easy, in some ways.
Today.
We didn't always have that, and I think you could take heart from that - think of the Pagan Way material and what its origins were, and reasons behind it - to provide Wicca-like ritual for those who were not in traditional covens.
So, it's doable.
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Hitting the edge of a Mystery suddenly in a symbolic language that runs natively on the system is kind of epic, isn't it?
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This is very thought provoking, especially given all the things going on in my tradition right now. I don't know that the two need each other necessarily. For us, there was a smaller mystery tradition first, which certainly had both lore and gnosis. So I question what it means to have a public framework. Does it impact mystery?
I completely related to your reluctance to be called to come forward with a mystery as well. I have to say this much. That something that was a mystery years ago seems to have moved into being now. It started by sharing, with others who had similar experiences. And now, it has grown into somewhat of a secret cult. It feels like many people gave birth to it at once. And like giving birth, there is always a share of apprehension involved.
Good luck on this path. I have never regretted following those paths when they have called. I hope you do not either.
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I do recognize this is hard, because the esoteric IS intensely personal, and the way you're working with the exoteric is very public. But I don't think keeping the two entirely seperate will work - it means having two half practices, neither of which functions fully.
--Chabas