June 30, 2002

(Click here for webring list).

Common question : "So, what, you've converted and now you're Kemetic Orthodox?". Hah, hah. No. I'd think that this page would be a pretty good illustration of one reason why I won't do so. What this question, sometimes asked, displays is a lack of understanding that has become all too fashionable, so much so as to have a name - "presumptive logic". The validity of an argument is assessed by some in terms of the consistency of the conclusions found at each step, with the conclusions that the assessor wishes to assume. This is sometimes called "campus preacher logic", and is a very aggressive form of question begging, backed up with a faint undertone of hostility. One isn't trying to have a discussion with the other person so much as one is trying to steamroller him.

We all should know better than to resort to such tactics. The only proper approach to critiquing a philosophy, or a religion, is to explore it from the inside, seeing where its conclusions lead as one allows them to evolve of their own accord, without these rhetorical interruptions from the conceptual outside world. Having done so, the body of conclusions drawn may then rightly be tested against what we know, in one sense or another, drawing from our moral sense, or our experience of external reality - not against what we just happen to believe, for theological belief is not knowledge. So, in the course of writing this page I have begun, not from my own point of view, but from a point of view adopted, for the sake of discussion, in which we presume that the Egyptian netjeru, or "Names" as the House likes to call them, are real, as opposed to those I actually worship, concerning myself more with Ptah-Hotep than with Aristotle. In real life, my priorities would be the exact reverse.

Did I convert? In a Historical Reconstructionist context, one may wonder what that would mean. The Hellenistic ancients themselves did not proceed from the assumption that their gods were real, and all others were fictions; nor do we, their would-be modern heirs. My own personal belief, hardly a unique one, is that all of the old pantheons are probably real, in some sense or another. I don't think of Poseidon as being the god of the sea, I think of him as being a god of the sea. The relationship between a people and their gods is considered by some of us to be a family one; for me to say that Hades is the one true god of the underworld, from this point of view, would be much like somebody saying that his grandpa was the one true grandfather.

Our myth structure may even add to the blurring : in between the myths that come down to us, sanctified, as it were, by centuries of retelling from the heart, and the stories wholly of our own making (never to be confused with the former), one has, at least in the context of our group, the concept of the "half-myth". One sees a precedent for this notion when the myths of other nations are retold by the Greeks, with the deities involved being renamed as if they were merely the Olympians, under other names. A half-myth (our own term) is such an importation of a myth from one mythos to another, only done with more care, so that the picture it paints of one of our deities is one that seems plausible to us. Today, in the context of our beliefs, it is not truly a myth; only time and centuries of conservative retelling can transform a story into a myth. But, if we choose well, that story may bring us closer to an understanding of our gods today, and may, in time, form a good foundation for the creation of a new myth.

One sees that the whole notion of "distinct religions", in a Pagan or a Traditionalist setting, isn't always as clear cut as it is in a mainstream religious setting. Yes, there are distinct belief systems and philosophies, sometimes so distinct as to be mutually incompatible (eg. Eclectic Wicca and Hellenic Reconstructionism); however, a mere difference of pantheon does not necessarily indicate such an incompatibility. I may visit another family, and respect its own quirks, without feeling that my own family should become more like it, or giving my own family cause to fear that I no longer feel attached to it; the same principle applies here, which is why there ever was such a thing as "Pagan networking". I may drop by an Asatruar shrine, and pay my respects to the Aesir and Vanir, honoring their ways while in their presence; this is not a loss of faith, but a show of courtesy. As a guest, I should respect that my host's home is not my own, and respect his ways, within reason.

It is when those ways reflect a lack of mutual respect, leaving reason far behind, that the time for one to cease respecting one's host has come. As we shall see, this was exactly the experience which our Kemetic friends were to offer me, for the sake of political expedience. I ignore the Egyptian netjeru, at this point, for the same reason as I ignore some of my older neighbors; not because I feel that they aren't real, but because their families leave me cold.

June 17, 2002

Click here to skip ahead to the review of the House of Netjer.

Like much of the Almond Jar, this subsite is a strange, stillborn thing. There is nothing here, except for a review of the House of Netjer, and commentary that spins off of that review. Mind you, this is not a prolonged rant. Sometimes, I did have some fun with some of the commentary, such as when I attempted a retelling of the story of Ra and Aset, or at least gave the reader something to think about, as I did in Formal vs. Magical Usage. But it is not the page I initially intended to write.

My initial decision had been that regardless of the degree to which events would lead me to write a positive review or a negative one, this subsite was going to be about Egyptian material in general, as it might be of interest to the Shrine. In a moment of irrational exhuberance, I made that "material of interest to both the House and the Shrine". Had I maintained my objectivity fully, I would never have done so. The positive signs at the House were never that great, and the negative ones were glaring, from the very beginning. But, having gone through the Pagan community (and its offshoots) looking for a group worth reporting, and having nothing better to show for my efforts than the name of a group whose high priest seemed to be a decent human being, and who could reliably be counted on to act like an adult worthy of his post, I was eager to find a group that offered more. This fact didn't alter my final conclusion, but it did stall my progession toward it. Perhaps this is for the best, though, as these delays lead to a more fully documented, and, I hope, more persuasive account, as I suspect that I won't be the only one to have been so eager to find an oasis of non-Judeo-Christian rationality in a sea of New Age ignorance.

The Legend of the House (capitalization deliberate) had taken on a life of its own, online. The House was imagined to be a sort of online, Egyptian Reconstructionist yeshiva. To see the House' new initiates going berserk when one argues against their position that the Ancient Egyptians harnessed electricity, and the House hierarchy censoring one in response to that hysteria, should dispel that illusion quickly. However, sometimes the irrationality is not so blatant.

For example, let us consider the House' flat assertion that the Ancient Egyptians practiced some variant on monotheism. They refer to monolatry, under which the various "gods and goddesses" of Egypt are seen as subjective manifestations which the human mind creates in order to understand a deity too complex for the human mind to grasp in its totality. In support of this, they will note that one can find one document after another, in which this deity is equated with another, or one is claimed to be an aspect of another. Thus, they will argue, one can see, in an apparently transitive way, that all of the "gods and godesses" of Egypt are aspects of each other, emanating from a common source, like "several wicks burning from the same pot of oil", as one of their clergy put it. I would suggest that while Tamara Siuda's credentials as a translator may be impeccible, her credentials as a philosopher are less so.

Part of the problem is that the House, under Siuda's guidance is, in effect, saying that all such claims are to be taken unskeptically, without any consideration of the possibility that this writer or that might be mistaken, or that some of these claims might have been made out of political ambition. If all other gods are considered to be part of the body of one's own god, then one's priesthood will grow greatly in power, and one's temple in wealth. Aside from the inherent naivite of taking all theological claims at face value, in an era in which the motives of the priesthood were so often less than pure, one has the curious assumption that the writers, themselves, necessarily intended that their comments always be taken literally, without fear of any contrary idioms getting in the way. This is most curious, because we, ourselves, don't speak in this way, and probably couldn't. Consider the statement

" I am right "

Native speakers of English will use this one, without blinking, but think about what you've just said. "Right" or "correct" are adjectives describing statements; if you translate that sentence, word for word into almost any language other than English, I'm told, and read it, you'll get many blank stares, because you will be telling the listeners that you, yourself, are a series of words. Nor are grammatical quirks the only ones which come into play. Consider the actor who will jokingly pick up a foam rubber "boulder", and say "Look at me, I'm Hercules", while the others groan. Does he literally mean that, even in joking ? No, of course not. By saying that, he is pretending to be as Hercules, in that he is pretending to manifest a trait of Hercules that other see as defining him as a character. So, if such an assumption of invariable literalness falls apart, even in our own language, how does one justify extending its use to another language? The House never tells us.

The much reviled Budge, in "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" (ISBN 0-486-21866-X), on p.lxxxix-lxxxi mentions a curious passage, which the reader may take the time to confirm in more recent translations, if he wishes. To take it literally, one would be forced to conclude that King Unas, after his death, became a cannibal who murdered and ate the other gods! The passage reads :

"The heavens drop water, the stars throb, the archers go round about, the bones of Akheru tremble, and those who are in bondage to them take to flight when they see Unas rise up as a soul, in the form of the god who liveth upon his fathers and maketh food of his mothers. Unas is the lord of wisdom, and his mother knoweth not his name. The gifts of Unas are in heaven, and he hath become might in the horizon like unto Tmu, the father who gave him birth, and after Tmu gave him birth, Unas became stronger than his father. The kas of Unas are behind him, the sole of his foot are beneath his feet, his gods are over him, his uraei are (seated) upon his brow, the serpent guides of Unas are in front of him, and the sprit of the flame looketh upon (his)soul.

The powers of Unas protect him; Unas is a bull in heaven, he directeth his steps where he will, he liveth upon the form which each god hath taken upon himself, and he eateth the flesh of those who come to fill their bellies with the magical charms in the Lake of Fire. Unas is equipped with power against the shining spirits thereof, and he riseth up in the form of the mighty one, the lord of those, the lord of those who dwell in power (?) Unas hath taken his seat with his side turned towards Seb. Unas hath weighed his words with the hidden god (?) who hath no name, on the day of hacking in pieces the firstborn. Unas is the lord of offerings, the untier of the knot, and he himself maketh abundant the offerings of meat and drink.

Unas devoureth men and liveth upon the gods, he is the lord to whom offerings are brought, and he counteth the lists thereof. He that cutteth off hairy scalps and dwelleth in the fields hath netted the gods in a snare; he that arrangeth his head hath considered them (good) for Unas and hath driven them unto him; and the cord-master hath bound them for slaughter. Khonsu the slayer of (his) lords hath cut their throats and drawn out their inward parts, for it is he whom Unas sent to drive them in; and Shesem hath cut them in pieces and boiled their members in his blazing cauldroms. Unas hath eaten their magical powers, and he hath swallowed their spirits; the great ones among them serve for his meal at daybreak, the lesser serve for his meal at eventide, and the least among them serve for his meal in the night. The old gods and the old goddesses become fuel for his furnace. The mighty ones in heaven shoot fire under the cauldrons which are heaped up with the haunches of the firstborn; and he maketh those who live in heaveen to revolve round Unas hath shot into the cauldrons the haunches of their women; he hath gone round the two heavens in thei entirety, and he hath gone round the two banks of the Celestial Nile.

Unas is the great Form, the Form of forms, and Unas is the chief of the gods in visible forms. Whatever he hath found upon his path he hath eaten forthwith, and the magical might of Unas is beforethat of all the sahu who dwell in the horizon. Unas is the firstborn of the firstborn. Unas hath gone round thousands and he hath offered oblations unto hundreds; he hath manifested his might as the Great Form through Sah (Orion) (who is greater) than the gods. Unas repeateth his rising in heaven and he is the crown of the lord of the horizon. He hath reckoned up the bandlets and the arm-rings, he hath taken up possession of the hearts of the gods. Unas hath eaten up the red crown, and he hath swallowed the white crown; the food of Unas is the inward parts, and his meat is those who live upon the magical charms in their hearts.

Behold, Unas eateth of that which the red crown sendeth forth, he increaseth, and the magical charms of the gods are in his belly; that which belongeth to him is not turned back from him. Unas hath eaten the whole of the knowledge of every god, and the period of his life is eternity, and the duration of his existence is everlastingness, in whatsoever he wisheth to take; whatsoever form he hateth he shall not labor in in the horizon for ever and ever and ever. The soul of the gods is in Unas, their spirits are with Unas, and the offerings made unto him are more than those made unto the gods. The fire of Unas is in their bones, for their soul is with Unas, their spirits are with Unas, and their shades are with those who belong unto them. Unas hath been with the two hidden (?) Kha (?) gods who are without power (?) ....

... the seat of the heart of Unas is among those who live upon this earth for ever and ever and ever "

How is one to read this passage? Certainly, it speaks to the megalomania of Unas, but is there anything else to be found here? On casual inspection, this amateur's guess would be that there is; what Budge takes literally, and is revolted by, might be taken metaphorically, as a description of the process of communion with the divine, albeit an extremely coarse one by our standards.

The basic concept is a simple, and (to some) a familiar one. There is a notion of speaking with God, or with one's departed relatives, that will often leave Jewish readers nodding in sympathy, and Anglo-Saxon readers shaking their heads in disbelief. The latter are suffering from an overdose of literalism. The one who carries on this conversation knows full well that he isn't really hearing the voice of God, or his deceased loved ones. The conversation is one that takes place in his imagination, between him, and his concept of God, or of the one he misses. Yet, there is more than play acting involved here. The custom reflects a recognition of the fact that this concept of the other contains more than surface appearances. Long familiarity with friends and family allows one a deeper sort of empathy than that, one which leads to a part of one echoing the spirit of the other. In a very real sense, one is talking to the other, just not directly.

In an article on the Almond Jar we speak of the gentle, slow, subtle influence of the Divine upon the worshipper. Such a notion is not original to this site; it can be found in the Tanakh (Jewish scriptures, aka "The Old Testament"); I understand that it also appears in Egyptian literature : "when I am quiet, I know the things that gods know). This is similar to the Jewish reference to trying to hear the voice of God in a storm, and not hearing it, but later on hearing it faintly, as a whisper almost lost in a breeze. This is important. It is, as we have said, one reason why we are as conservative in our mythic reconstructions as we are, and not open to the suggestion that we "update" them, to make them more politically correct - they would lose their force as sacred literature, and would no longer allow us to connect to the gods. We need that connection, as we meditate, stilling our minds so that we might hear that still, quiet voice of the Divine. Some might argue that the very act of putting the occasional absurdity out of our minds, as a matter of necessity, is an intrinsic part of that stilling, a gentle joke telling our conscious minds to be quiet and listen.

In the process of opening ourselves up to communion with our gods, we allow a part of ourselves to mirror them. Having done so, we have, to varying degrees, allowed a part of ourselves, something within us, to mirror those we worship, and it is that flawed mirror image of divinity that we speak with, in prayer. (Perhaps this is one reason why the prayers of the holy seem to be heard so much more clearly; the divine image that is within their subconscious minds is truer to the original, and thus closer). One might say that we have taken the gods within us, or "swallowed" or "eaten" them, making them part of ourselves, in a figurative, but highly relevent sense. In that sense, the gods are within us; to conclude, as "John", and so many of his former co-religionists in the Wiccan community do, that they are literally within us, emanations of the personal or alleged collective unconscious, however, would be to confuse one's perceptions with that which one perceives, or, to use the terminology introduced elsewhere, to confuse the noumenal with the phenomenal deity.

In this manner, then, a deity might speak as Christ did when he said "I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me" truthfully, without being one and the same as the other, especially should he and the other be omniscent. Each would dwell in perfect, undistorted form in the subconscious of the other, each moving the others hearts, even as our loved ones may move ours, years after they have departed. One would not be justified in saying that the distinction between the two would be merely "subjective", under such circumstances, any more than one would be justified in asserting that two family members were really the same person, on a similar basis, albeit to a lessened degree. (*)

As we have noted, it is the still, quiet voice of Deity that one seeks, and one can't find it through an act of will, for the same reason that one can't hear a faint sound by shouting; one's will is closer at hand and exerts a more powerful influence on one's own consciousness than any faint and subtle influences from outside; one's own inner voice, in the form of one's pre-conceived image of the presence one would feel, would drown out the 'soft voice of the divine', 'that still quiet voice that moves the heart'; something which is felt, not heard. The very act of attempting to do so will cause one to lose that sense of communion with one's god; the god will 'flee'. One must instead quiet one's mind, and wait for the connection to come to one of its own accord; one must lie in wait for it. So, we see that if we take the passage above in this metaphorical sense, the metaphor tells us a real truth, in terms suitable for the role that the Egyptians were accustomed to seeing their pharoah in. Having thus brought each god 'within' himself, the pharoah would then be as that god - in a metaphorical sense, he would be Tmu, for Tmu would be in him.

Could this have been what the Egyptians were getting at? Or could they have had yet another, non-literal meaning in mind? One might ask the House, but if one is looking for a truly informative answer (one accompanied by an explanation), one won't get it from the House. Indeed, one sees no sign in their literature that they even pondered the question, or ever considered the possibility that the commentary should be taken at anything other than face value, despite the well-known perils of reading the writings of the neighbors of the Egyptians (eg. the Bible) in that same straightforward fashion.

As usual, they simply proclaimed their own interpretations to be dogma, equating teaching with group memorization, overlooking the truth that the true teacher doesn't teach her students what to think, but how to think - a process which is ill-served by rote memorization. But then, that is a distinction which fewer and fewer people seem to understand in our era, in which "a college education" is often little more than a program of spoon feeding information which is to be regurgiated to exams, and political indoctrination on behalf of the administration's most recent pet causes. As a former graduate student, however, from the University of Chicago, no less, Tamara Siuda should have known better than to foster such a dogmatic approach to "teaching". In a bad era, the House has elected to become part of the problem, instead of part of the solution.

What happened while I was over at the House? At the Nisut's (Tamara Siuda's) personal invitation, I dropped in on her boards, and took part. What followed was a tedious rehash of the standard script for so many Usenet flamewars. Newcomer shows up, offers rational counterargument to local mythology, gets flamed by regulars who then habitually grab onto even the flimsiest of pretexts in order to continue their personal attacks, their target then being censored on the basis that he is "causing trouble". The administrators blame the victim, and try to claim that they behaved courageously by taking the path of least resistance, on the basis that the victim has pointed out the injustice of their actions. It is the ultimate online cliche. Here, the specific issue was Afrocentricism, but in the end, how much does that matter? I bring it up only to make the documentation concrete, and to rebut a certain amount of nonsense before it becomes entrenched.

As a reviewer, I came for what Tamara Siuda should have known would matter the most to any real scholar - the truth. When the leader of a religious group recruits a known paranoid schizophrenic who allegedly displayed manic-depressive like moodswings while still in prison, and the membership pushes to get his critics silenced in the interests of "peace", the truth - the prize sought by any legitimate scholarship - is the last thing that one can hope will come out of the discussions that result. But then, should one's real focus be on selling merchandise and lessons, and maybe seeing how many members one can get to "tithe" (turn over 10 percent of their incomes), the truth will tend to take a back seat to politics. Whether the management of the House could truthfully be accused of this I'll leave the reader of this page to decide for himself, once he has seen the facts.

I felt that my some of my own suspicions were confirmed online, as Tamara Siuda, in our last exchange in a truly bizarre fight, adopted the very same strategies that her mentor, "Mambo Racine", had become notorious for. The woman who had portrayed herself as the moderate alternative to the insanity in the Pagan community seemed to be just another politician, just another spiritual salesman with a storefront. Of the lessons that I learned along the way, the most important was that the time for "Pagan" listing sites like the Agora had passed, because there was nobody for us to find worth discovering.

Where to, next?

1. Our review of the House of Netjer
2. Our main page.
3. One of the webrings this site is on

(*) "To a lessened degree?", the incredulous reader may reply, "How can that make sense? Two people either are, or are not, the same".

Are you so sure of that? Let us say, in a bout of cruelty, that one of the gods were to slowly transform your brain, cell by cell, right down to the molecular level, into a carbon copy of somebody else's brain, with his memories. We would agree, probably, that you would still be you, after the first cell was converted, and that you would not be you when the process was complete. At what point would you cease to be you? How many cells into the conversion? If we insist that equivalence of identity is an all-or-nothing deal, and that a single, non-detectable cell change isn't enough to change one into a new person, then by a very long chain of syllogisms (a pair of sorites, actually) you would still be the same person at the end of the transformation, that you were before, contradicting our earlier assertion that you would not be. The only way to avoid a contradiction here, is to accept that identity can be a matter of degree.

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