On Race and Religion

In Myrkr's post on NYC Pagan Pride Day [ http://myrkr.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/pagan-pride-day-2009/], she touched on the subject of race and ancestry in religion, particularly the Afro-Caribbean. I was at the Voodoo workshop as well, and won't waste words repeating Myrkr's story. This post is going to be comprised of my own thoughts on this issue.

We are all beautiful, we are all human, we share this wonderful earth with each other. Faith transcends color. Life transcends color. Why should we allow the tone of our flesh to determine what we can and cannot do?

I agree with Myrkr on this. And quite frankly, the gods and spirits will choose who they will, and probably don't appreciate being told who may or may not honor them. However, I also understand that not all religions are universal, and that some have a more or less strong emphasis on ancestry and tribe.

Thousands of years ago, probably all religions were that way, being the beliefs and rituals and myths of specific tribes and bands. I asked my friend Beth for her take on this subject, since she studies Ifa and is involved with Esu, Yemaya, and Osun. We talked for about 50 minutes, and here's what I've distilled from our talk. The following is my words, but I checked and repeated the following no less than 5 times to Beth, and she OK'd it:

Blood plays a big role because the Orishas, etc. are deified ancestors.

As such, their descendants can be considered to have a pre-existing connection to them.

due to the belief that one's ancestors will watch over you.

If that pre-existing connection does not exist, then one can still practice the religion,

BUT there needs to be plenty of study and feeling the presence and uplifting from

said Orisha or whatever. A real relationship, a real spark. Not "puppy love". If that relationship if there, then nothing that anybody says or thinks can destroy it.

It's possible to honor the god/Orisha, without having to convert to a religion, etc. You need to know the mythology and the gods.

Everyone is a lightbulb, not the light. The light is the truth, we're just the lightbulbs. We're the radio, not the signal, people's own notions,etc. can and do get mixed in. It's like a game of telephone, and you should always take what anybody says with a grain of salt. It's not Gospel, so to speak.

Aside from the part about blood and deified ancestors, it's the same for any path or deity anywhere. Without study and true experience, even something as simple as feeling Ra's presence at a sunrise, your relationship with the deity, or practice of a religion won't amount to much. I emailed the leader of the aforementioned Voodoo workshop, Lilith Dorsey, about this issue, and await her response. I pride myself on researching and on getting things down in writing. :)

EDIT: I haven't gotten an email back, and at this point, don't expect to.

Pagan Pride Day!

I went to the New York City Pagan Pride Day with Myrkr, today. I always look forward to the New York City Pagan Pride Day, held on or around the fall sabbat of Mabon, this year September 26. (There was a Yule event last year, but I didn't get a chance to go, and I don't know whether or not they'll do it again this year.) It was a lot of fun. I know very few pagans personally, and none that live near me. I, like a lot of pagans, lack the physical community of like-minded people, let alone co-religionists that members of larger religions enjoy and take for granted. For all I know, nobody at PPD was Kemetic, but it didn't matter. I was surrounded by people who love the old gods, no matter the land onto which they descended. (Or for that matter, new-old gods, too!) My interest in magic might also help me, in contrast to less magically-inclined pagans.

Pagan Pride Day is one of the very few events I could feel completely at ease, and yet be among strangers. Or people I didn't know, but strangers. Myr and I have gone enough times that Dawn, a kitchen witch and owner of Cucina Aurora (Specializing in recipes, cooking tools, spice mixes and olive oils that are both magically tasteful and magically tasty. Link here: ) remembered us from last year. When we went to her stall last year, we felt like she was inviting us to her Italian home, with plenty of mangia, mangia, mangia. (Eat, eat, eat!) Their olive oils are wonderful, and their garlic dip mix is tasty when mixed with cream cheese to make dip, or even sprinkled on buttered toast, as Myr has shown me.

This year was also fun, in addition to visiting Cucina Aurora again. There were the vendors and the musicians, and the workshops. I visited Highwinds Farm and stocked up on jasmine tea and rose hips for myself, as well as found some St. John's Wort for my cousin. I picked up frankincense and myrrh to burn for the Gods sometime, a burning bowl for the resins, stick incense (frankincense, myrrh, Frankincense AND Myrrh, Cedar wood, and Sandalwood) and a free wooden incense stick holder. I hope Thoth and Hathor enjoy their smell. My only complaint about the event as a whole, is that for reasons I'm not aware of, the workshops and musicians were on a mixed-up schedule, and the ritual at the end wound up getting pushed back late enough that Myr and I, unfortunately, couldn't participate.

I entered a raffle and got a nice little Pagan Goodie Bag with small samples of incense, a small candle, and lots of coupons and cards. The local OTO and the Aiwass Study Group, among others, had tables. The Aiwass group had a big picture of Aleister Crowley with the face cut out so people can take pictures. When it gets emailed to me, I'll put it up.

We went to a very informative workshop on Voodoo, though it did have a problem, which I'll let Myrkr talk about here, as I can't yet organize my thoughts sufficiently to express my own opinion on it, save that I basically agree with Myrkr. I think this event might give me one or two additional blog posts here. About time I updated!

Myrkr's post: http://myrkr.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/pagan-pride-day-2009/

Cucina Aurora (Myrkr links to them, but they deserve the additional word-of-"mouth"):

http://www.cucinaaurora.com/

Highwinds Farm Inc.: http://www.midtel.net/~highwind/

Edit: I haven't gotten my photo. :(

Sorry for the lack of up-date....

...I've been in a real lull in terms of Kemetic-related stuff lately, and only recently decided to make the subject of this blog broader than just Kemeticism and related stuff. In any case, the lull has ended for the time being. Last night, I visited the new, or re-born, or re-located Children of Kemet forums: http://childrenofkemet.org/ If you have any interest in Kemeticism, you should definitely visit. Great discussions, even better people. I've posted there, as well as posted some devotional poetry to Thoth, Hathor, and Re.

I find that I get into these lulls a lot, where I get overwhelmed by the day-to-day struggles of life and find myself immersed in them, and forgetting the gods, or even ANYTHING beyond those struggles. I feel like a comet, or like a small planet with a very elliptical, irregular orbit, spending most of my time outside the solar system, and occasionally swinging into to the inner solar system for a while before I am plunged out into the frigid vastness again. Anybody out in the blogosphere know how to prevent those lulls? Or to cope with them?

While I don't know the ultimate cause of the lulls, I know the proximate causes for this particular lull: I had to resign from my old job at the after-care program and find work elsewhere. I've found work at a call center, and while I'm getting used to it, it's not the best job for me, and it's tough. Not in the same way digging ditches in the rain would be, but a lot of times, it's a thankless job. In light of the incidents in the news about employees getting sacked for blabbing on their blogs, I won't name names or companies. Running around looking for work and sitting around conducting surveys doesn't leave one much time to look to the spiritual, to the numinous. And I'm not one of those enlightened souls who can see God in the cubicle walls, or in the shrill protests of the angry harpy who you have to talk to.

In other news, I've also started the fall semester of college, with only one class, a fiction-writing workshop. It's brutal, a course where your writing gets cut up, shredded, sliced, diced, julienned, and flensed.....But very educational. Bad for the ego, good for the soul.

I don't have much Kemetically related here at the moment, to be honest. I'm looking forward to the New York City Pagan Pride Day on the 26th, though. :)

Hello World.

Welcome to the Scriptorium. I'm Thutm0sys, and this is my blog. Who am I? I'm a lot of things. I'm a kemetic. Little K kemetic. I am independent, not a member of any temple or group, and will approach Kemeticism, and everything else, from that perspective. For those not familiar with the term, I venerate the Egyptian (Kemetic, from KMT, the ancient name for Egypt) gods, though in particular I am devoted to the god Thoth and the goddess Hathor.

I am not a reconstructionist. I would be more of a neo-reconstructionist or reformed reconstructionist, since I realize there is much that cannot be done the way the ancients had, that I am not a priest and my house is not a temple, that I cannot bathe in natron, etc. However, I try to do as much research as I can on the gods (duh) and on ancient practices of worship and heka (magic) to incorporate into my own religious and magical practices.

Yes, I do believe in and practice magic. I understand some reconstructionists might consider magic to be impious, hubristic, or even useless, but the Egyptians didn't, and neither do I. However, I focus more on the religious side, as far as religion can be distinguished from magic.

This blog will contain my musings, thoughts, and opinions, particularly on kemeticism, spirituality, religion, as well as other subjects, related or not, such as news, or life.

I hope you enjoy your visit, and try not to get any ink on your clothes. ;)