While I am Kemetic Orthodox, and I like the Senut ritual, it’s too much for me to do every day. Again, I’m feeling a need to go back to my simpler morning ritual of greeting the Gods each morning with prayer, lighting some incense, and spending a moment in Their presence. Which, I know, Senut is a more detailed version of, but it’s not what I want. I find Senut very difficult to perform when others are in the house. I had no issues with my own little ritual, but because Senut can take me upwards of an hour, and I need to be in the right frame of mind, it just… I just end up putting it off.

Perhaps I need to write some more prayers to say in the morning and make it my habit to recite prayers, burn incense, and just be with Them after I get up, rather than speed to the computer and get coffee. I feel I need something to make me feel like I’m doing something.

I probably doesn’t help that I’m not good in the morning, but if I could manage it during high school, I can manage it now. I might also do some more work on redoing my ‘book of shadows’ as I had intended to do earlier. Because I feel I need to readjust where I am and properly set down my beliefs and practices, rather than just pretend I’m a whole bunch of things without being able to point to why. So maybe we’ll do that this arvo or something.

I suppose it’s hard at the moment, saying prayers, as the Gods on my shrine and in my life are somewhat varied and I’m not sure how to approach Them all in the right way. Then again, maybe that’s just an excuse to procrasatinate. Perhaps it’s time to stop being lazy about my faith and make it part of my life again, instead of it just being statues on a shelf. :/

Oh, fuck, and now I just want to redo my bloody shrine again because Sobek and Heru-sa are prodding. FFS. How many Gods can you fit on a shrine? As many as They desire, apparently. :/

Okay, so this is a little shorter than normal, but I’ve got this need to do things again, so I’ll leave this as it is and go do something while I”ve got the desire to, otherwise it’ll pass and I’ll end up doing nothing at all. >.<

(As an aside, I’m also posting this over at Per Sebek, due to relevance.)

Now, I know religion can be a touchy subject for some, and for those who are Pagan of some sort, it can be a subject they are unwilling to talk about due to a fear of harrassment. I get it. However, I don’t think that can really justify the notion that all these little pagan groups need to cut themselves off from anyone who doesn’t agree with them, as if somehow an alternative experience or view point might be the cause of the apocalypse.

‘They’re just a troll, ignore them’. I find this excuse somewhat pathetic. Sure, some might be genuine trolls, and fair enough, if they’re genuine trolls, so be it. But if it’s more of an issue of someone saying something you don’t like, or maybe expressing a belief that’s not necessarily one you hold, I am not inclined to call troll. I don’t think cutting yourself off from alternative perspectives helps anyone, and I think it gives the perception of a closed community, one that is conformist and not accepting of differing views.

This is something that irritates the shit out of me. Just because they don’t see your God in the same way doesn’t mean their experience is any less valid. It just causes animosity and frustration and the sort of energy that says ‘you should conform to the way we see the Gods’.

As an example, one argument I remember seeing over and over again on a certain pagan forum was the whole Aset/Isis debate about whether They were separate Gods or not. (Don’t get me started on it; I am sick of these kinds of arguments.) I could also lump into this all the other threads about experiences with varying Gods and who It might be and such. There were times when people were told it can’t be X because X doesn’t appear/behave/talk/etc that way (with or without ín my opinion’ disclaimer).

I just… Gods are not so simple. We experience Them in ways that we will understand. It’s a very personal and individual relationship. The face They show me might not be the same face They show another. Who are we to say whose experience is invalid because their experience with a certain God doesn’t add up to the way you see Them? They’re not characters from a TV show. They’re Gods, ffs. Get some perspective. >.<

I also think it’s rather dangerous to immediately dismiss someone who’s had a different experience than you. It can lead to isolationism and a definite fear of Others who think differently. You can say you’re protecting yourself from abuse, but it’s a hollow excuse and I don’t buy it.

Djehuty once told me that wisdom can be found anywhere. I agree with Him, and I appreciate the freedom both He and Sobek have given me to explore my own spirituality wherever I happen to wander to.

Learning about another faith, or even talking to someone who believes different things to you, can teach you shitloads about your own faith, and I think that’s far better than running away or outright ignoring someone because someone says something that doesn’t agree with your view of X.

You can’t grow spiritually if you don’t question your own faith and occasionally hear stuff you don’t like. Spirituality is not supposed to be easy. Challenges build you up and strengthen your character, and your own beliefs. Seeing something in a different light can often be what you need to grow, even if it goes against what you currently believe. If it hurts, so be it. Earn your faith, don’t just accept it and expect it to remain unchanged, as if you’re merely babysitting an electronic pet. Take the hits, deal with the consequences, and perhaps there’d be more understanding between differing groups rather than bitching and animosity.

So says me, apparently channeling Set. >.<

There. I’m done now.

Most of my thoughts are on religion and spirituality tonight, but I’m not interested in writing about that here. Various things around the place have me both annoyed at religion and glad to be amongst friends.

The way I practice religion and spirituality are probably rather a lot different to the way others might do it. I find my own way, and reject anyone who tells me what to believe. The nature of my beliefs and cosmology have shifted substantially this year. I am not solely Earth-focussed anymore. My worldview has expanded and is now filled with stars.

I am definitely a walking example of an eclectic pagan, a label I claimed when I first started out as a Wiccan. I think I have a better understanding now of what it means to be an eclectic pagan than I did when I was 16. I am also, perhaps, becoming more of a Discordian than I had anticipated. For all its apparent silliness, there is truth and wisdom to be found there too.

Kemetic beliefs, Discordianism and Hinduism are the major influences on my spirituality. They intermingle and twine together and create a cohesive something I can relate to. I have a somewhat more lax view on spirituality and spiritual practice than some. The world around us contains its own magics and power. To spend too much time in shrine, seeking desperately the company of gods, is to miss the beautiful, magical, powerful world we live in.

We are connected to everything. Everything we do affects the planet in some manner. The magic in the earth is … astounding. It’s comforting. I like feeling it. I’m the sort of person who will always want to be connected to the earth in some way. To my country. It’s where I belong.

The Kemetic calendar is so ingrained in my head now. I feel the energy draining, how things are gasping their last few breaths. The world is waiting for a new year. I can feel it. I’m ready for it, that I can say for sure. It’s that need for renewal. And I think the calendar does work in a southern hemisphere context very well. July, the last month of the Kemetic year (to use normal dating, as opposed to Kemetic dating), always feels like the darkest part of the year. The coldest, the wettest, the most miserable. And then August comes along and we’re halfway through winter. Spring is coming. The world begins to renew itself, to begin the process of renewal. To come out of the dark and cold of midwinter and emerge into the new year, and the coming spring, is fantastic. It breathes life into you again, makes everything brighter and cleaner. Everything becomes better then.

But I fear I am rambling now. I am not sure there is much coherent logic here, and I’ve been more spiritual than I had planned, but I think it’s okay. Anyway. Time for bed.

Humans are stupid creatures who will pick petty fights amongst themselves for no reason at all. Religion turns people into sheep, no matter which one it is. I’m tired of it all. I want out.

I’ve always been a bit individualistic like that, I think. I don’t like being told what to believe, and I can’t stand to be around people who refuse to question their faith, or refuse to rock the boat. It’s not on. Use your fucking minds. God, Netjer, whatever, gave you a bright fucking mind and as much free will as you can cope with. Why must you give it all away and let someone else dictate what you believe?The longer I hang around in the Pagan community, the more I see the same things happening there. They just follow blindly. You’d think they’d have more sense, since they usually come from Christianity with complaints about being told what to believe, but apparently, that doesn’t count when it comes to Pagan faiths, because they’re totally different and so much better anyway.

Please. Tell someone who cares.

This is why I can’t bear to be a part of any religious group. I hate being told what to believe, and I will not be preached to. I have my own beliefs. They’re sufficiently eclectic that I just don’t fit into one place. So excuse me for being different. And it’s not even that my beliefs clash with everyone else’s. It’s more that while my path might converge and run parallel with some groups more than with others, they never meet, nor should they be obliged to.

I don’t even know if the Bawy year is responsible for this sudden influx of agnosticism or  not, or whether it’s just me being weird again. I think I need to be away from Kemetic Orthodoxy (KO) for a while. I need that freedom to work myself out and whether I can abide being affiliated with them again. I meant to do so a while ago, but never got around to it. Perhaps now is the time to step back from my shemsu vows.

Actually no. I’ve changed my mind. I think what I need to do is pull back and work out what being a shemsu actually means for me, not try and be something I’m not. As much as I want to pull back from KO, and I have thought about it for over a year now, I’ve never done anything about it. I think a part of my soul really does want to be KO, so now I have to work out what shemsu means for me, not what it means for everyone else.

A friend and ex-KO once asked me what it means to be a shemsu, and I couldn’t answer her then. I think I need to find an answer to this. Maybe then I’ll feel better about where I am.

Because I embrace many beliefs that aren’t KO and don’t strictly belong to one single other faith system. I am eclectic like that. I embrace bits of discordianism, bits of warrior spirituality, a few things I swiped from Isobelle Carmody, and other things relating to the country I live in. I’m a mongrel of a person. I’ve picked up a few things from learning about Indigenous beliefs as well, especially things relating to country.

I suppose I’m also tired of the politics within specific groups. There is a pressure to conform even if there’s no thing to conform to. The more you’re obsessed with Egypt, the better you are spiritually. Which is utter bullshit to me.

This isn’t one of my better worded essays. More a late-night rant I need to get off my chest. Maybe I’ll collect this into a better worded thing later, but right now, I need to get these words out. So deal with this semi-coherent rant. I need to sleep before I go to work tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking about my ancestors recently. ANZAC Day always brings them to the fore. I’m almost ashamed I give them so little thought during the rest of the year.

When I was divined, Hemet (AUS) told me that my ancestors were proud of me. Even now, to think on those words makes me choke up and want to cry, and I still have no word for the emotion it elicits from me.

To carry the name of your ancestors by choice is a big decision. One might be named after them at birth, but to choose a name once taken by a relative is quite significant. I’m at that point in my life where I plan to do this, but I’m yet to ask permission from my ancestors to do so. I feel it’s only right before taking their name as my own.

I still think on my maternal grandparents a lot. I do miss them greatly, and I still can’t shake the feeling that Grandad’s Welsh flag is meant for me. One day I’ll carry it for him in his honour.

Not a long post tonight, I know, but I needed to get these thoughts down before bed. They’ve waited a long time to be written.

Also, I’ll be writing up my thoughts on Dawkins’ little tirade against New Age stuff on Sunday. Won’t that be a laugh?

Now, whilst I’m not opposed to religion itself per se, I do object to religion being used to manipulate people and attain such power and influence that they can distort our democratic society into hatred and racism.

I will not tolerate a theocracy, no matter which religion is behind it.I might be a marginal “weirdo” of society, but that doesn’t make me any less an Australian citizen than “normal” people. I’m a decent human being who doesn’t do drugs, believes in the truth, and I have my own set of faith-based and non-faith-based values and morals by which I live my life. I have compassion for those not as fortunate as I. I believe human rights should be fought for, valued and protected, not abused “in the national interest.”

Should a Christian theocracy ever take over this country, I’d probably end up ostracised, dead or as a refugee somewhere else. The kind of Christians pushing for a theocracy are not the sort that would ever tolerate me as a human being.

And, see, it’s been a movement on an evolutionary time scale. No big upheavals, take overs, coups or anything like that. They use words, they manipulate, they disguise themselves to infiltrate their targets. They’re sneaky bastards, they are. They always use doublespeak. They say one thing and mean something else.

They slowly erode our defences and weasel their way in, taking little by little so that we don’t notice what they’ve nicked. Everything can be justified as being “in the national interest”, whatever that is. National security is all important. Nothing stands in the way of defending our borders, not even boatloads of poor refugees fleeing countries much worse than ours, seeking compassion and a new life and getting razor wire instead.

It’s disgusting. This country disgusts me. It saddens me that, should nothing change any time soon, if I end up falling in love with a girl, I may never be able to marry her in the country of my birth. That “marriage is between a man and a woman” has been enshrined in law frightens me. It’s just another example of “Christian” values infiltrating legislation and becoming law.

Why is it we see no problem with Christian teachings becoming law, but abhor the strict Muslim sharia law or even, is there a Jewish one too? Religious law being enshrined into federal law and in doing so imposing those beliefs on the entire population stinks and is, to me, a bad corruption of democracy, which some of these Christian nutters want to replace with theocracy.

I see no distinction between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims, who are meant to be “the enemy”. That more moderate Christians aren’t as dismissive of these fundamentalist Christians as they should be scares me. I would love to see moderate liberal Christians standing up and saying, “These people are not what Christianity is about. Christianity is a religion of peace,” and rejecting the Religious Right’s nutcase views. But I very much doubt that will happen any time soon.

I know it sounds paranoid to say this, but it does feel like everyone’s too scared to speak out and dissent, which a democracy gives them the right to do. DO. NOT. STAY. SILENT. Do not let free voices be silenced and our country led astray. Dear Netjer, let some sense be injected into those in power.

I do not blame the Australian people for succumbing to this and letting it happen. It isn’t their fault. They (mostly) didn’t ask for this. It’s a small select group of Christians that have done this, and they are the Christians I hate, as much as it pains me to say so, because I don’t hate lightly.

Okay, maybe ‘hate’ is the wrong word.

I don’t like what they’re doing and what they stand for. But I can’t keep silent. It’s too hard to stay silent any longer. Someone needs to wake up the nation and bring them back to their senses. I feel like a doomsday guy, walking around the streets of the city with a sandwich board on, crying out that the end of democracy is nigh, and all the while, I’m dismissed as a nutter and ignored.

Don’t you know what’s being done to this country? Wake the fuck up! Wake up from your materialistic slumber and live again!

*sighs*

I’ve been hanging with Discordians too much. I’m beginning to think they’re the only sane people left in the world. :/

I had a pretty good life growing up. I never went without, my parents haven’t split up, hell, they even job-shared when we were kids so they could spend equal time with us. I went to a private high school, even got to university, and am about to finish a science degree.

To put it in perspective, these things are not universal. Every kid in the world does not get access to schooling. Some kids don’t have parents. A lot of kids are going hungry. I live in a politically stable country that has never had a civil war. I have freedoms a lot of people don’t. I have a damn good life compared to what some have.A feeling has crept up on me in the last year as I’ve been looking for work. I’d rather do a job that pays less but is more satisfying than a job that pays more but isn’t as satisfying. I got a good education and I want to put that to use somehow. I shouldn’t waste this gift by throwing myself into the coporate world to be beaten into submission and strive for nothing but money.

But then, my parents have never really had work like that anyway. It’s been churches and church groups and not-for-profit organisations and such. I’ve met a lot of refugees because of the work mum’s done. Really puts your life in perspective when you hear what they’ve gone through.

I suppose that’s partly why I find the corporate world so disgusting. I find their drive for profits obnoxious, the hours of work unbearable and the stress unwarranted. I don’t want to subject myself to that kind of world. Besides, I hate suits and that really formal workwear. So uncomfortable. I’d rather put my energies into something that’s actually going to do some good to society. I want to be recognised for my work, but I don’t want to be famous. Does that make sense?

Hmm. I suppose it’s good I’ve come to this conclusion before I’ve done a decade or more of unsatisfying work. I’m also noticing I have only a small desire for stuff. My materialism has declined somewhat lately. Sure, I could list off plenty of things I ‘want’, but I probably won’t end up buying any of them simply because I’ve survived quite well without them. The things I need to survive are a place to live, food to eat, clean drinking water and a good family. Everything else is non-essential. Hell, I didn’t even have to pay for university. I deferred my fees til later. Sure, I now have a 25k HECS debt hanging over my head, but compared to what some people have to pay to go to university, I’ll take it. There are plenty of women in the world who aren’t allowed to go to uni. I consider myself lucky that I live in the country I do.

Which brings me to religion, sexuality and gender. (I suck at segues) We have the freedom to practice any religion we like in this country and not be discriminated against. In theory, at least. In practice, it’s different, as evidenced by the disdain by which non-Christian faiths are given. Islam especially has recieved a lot of bad press in recent years, not all of it justified. As for me, I’m a Kemetic Orthodox shemsu who’s flirting with discordianism and warrior spirituality. Such a wonderful combination. And I’m also transgendered and bisexual. I really am at the edge of society.

I might be unashamedly left-wing, but that doesn’t automatically make me a Labor supporter. I don’t like the way Rudd is portraying himself as Howard Lite™ in all aspects apart from the environment and IR as far as I can tell. I haven’t decided if I’m going to vote Labor or not. I’ve long since stopped believing election year promises, which makes deciding who to vote for more difficult. As much as I want Howard out, is Rudd going to end up being the lesser of two evils?

I’ve already mentioned where I stand as regards to climate change, so I won’t go into it again. I’m stuck in the middle. While I applaud the call to live more sustainably, I’m not convinced we should do so solely because of climate change. We should look after the environment though. This is the only planet we’ve got so we should take care of it. I’m just not convinced that our recent weather patterns are solely due to human-induced climate change. I’m a weird sort of greenie, I know. I’m weird in a lot of ways.

But I should stop this rant now and get on with job-hunting. Mum wants me to get one done today. Hmm. Lab job, see? Yeah. And so endeth my rant.

It mentioned how kids who’ve grown up with computer games are living in two places at once: online and offline. I’m one of them. There’s this physical world I interact on and live in, then there’s the internet. It’s so intangible a thing, the internet. You can’t really touch it, or actually live in it. You can’t see it. You can observe it, interact with it, use it to connect with anyone in the world.

See, I’ve got this theory about The Divine. When They made us, They gave us a small spark of Their power. You could call it our soul, but that’s not quite what it is. It’s almost like consciousness, almost like it, but not. It’s hard to define. It’s the remnant from our creation by the Gods. Because of this, when we create things, as the Gods did, a small part of our spark is imprinted in what we make, so the Divine is passed to us and into what we make.

Now, when I think about the internet and what it is, how everyone’s connected to it, there’s a lot of little sparks flying around from all that’s been created there, so it’s not hard for me to imagine that those small sparks can facilitate the connection of people to each other.

The internet is becoming another form of consciousness, albeit in a different mould. It lives, it changes, it evolves, because of what we do to it.

It’s almost like the Unseen world, in a way, except with a different purpose. Reality is the Seen world, the internet is Unseen. It’s intangible. It’s the exchange of energy across wires, and also without wires, lets information be exchanged between people. With the advent of online games, it’s become an unreal world. Anything can happen there. It’s dangerous, sure, but the laws of physics can be ignored. You can be anything and anyone you want. The internet has no borders. It seemingly goes on forever.

I’ve felt deep connections with close and not-so-close friends online. Intense emotions that aren’t mine. It’s experiences like that that make me believe that the internet has gone beyond just a bunch of 1s and 0s. It’s reflecting humanity, it’s a shared cultural “artifact”, for lack of a better word. Our collective consciousness taps into this. No one’s alone any more. You can find someone who likes the same thing/s you do, no matter how obscure. It’s a giant unseen meeting place for humanity.

I’m fascinated to find out what it evolves into next. Humanity will no doubt live in cyberspace more than they do now, and the borders between the seen and unseen will overlap and become almost indistinguishable. I wonder if this will be a good thing or not. How far should we let this go before it goes too far?