Set Story: Part 4

So, I was asked how I came to meet and be involved with Set and started to type a “short” version of the story only to find that even the “short” version is incredibly long. So I’m doing a series of installments called Set Story. (I just had a moment where I envisioned a sort of Kemetic version of the How I Met Your Mother TV show, I hope that’s just my subconscious being *funny* because that show stretched out its premise waaaay too long...) 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Set Story: Part 4

"You do realize I'm German right?" I asked him once.

Why should that matter?

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter now that I think about it, but...I did sort of think I ought to belong to some Heathen god or something."

 You belong to me, *smirk* and I take who I will. 

"Well, I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, you're... sort of stubborn."

Heh. You understate me greatly.

It took and intense period of instruction and research for me to really get it through my head that I was meant to be Kemetic--and always had been, in a way. But I was a very willing student. I devoured the books the library had to offer and ordered others on interlibrary loan. I grew comfortable with Set and came to like having him about. I even managed to secure a statue of him over the winter break. For his part, Set had a lot of changes planned for me--my life abruptly became a whirlwind of unplanned setbacks which nevertheless turned quickly into opportunities. I got so accustomed to his style of "fixing" things that when my family's car got totaled in an accident I immediately turned to my mother and said,

 "Awesome, we're getting a new car! We needed one of those for the summer trip."

She responded by looking at me like I had three heads.

"What?" I asked, "No one got hurt..."

But somewhere in the background there was a problem, which, as usual, I didn’t notice: I was comfortable with Set only by virtue of the fact that I hadn’t addressed my real concerns about his mythos. I loved him for who and what he was, but I still had it in my head that there was something wrong with worshiping a “murderer” even if he wasn’t as bad as some sources made him out to be. (I know, I know...but I didn't read Seth: God of Confusion until much later, so I was still working off of a lot of Plutarch based stuff)

And because I couldn't bring myself to be scared of the god who had taken me in and given me a new lease on life, I defaulted to being scared of the rest of the pantheon instead. I just couldn’t see how any of them could have a favorable opinion of me given the mythology of the god I was regularly talking to. And I feared Wesir in particular. Set had a solution to that, of course.

Talk to him.

“What are you, crazy? You murdered him! What am I supposed to say: 'Hi, my patron killed you, here's some offerings.' I mean, seriously, how am I supposed to make that conversation not awkward?”

You’ll see. 

“No. I won’t. Because I am not going to do that.”

I had not figured out yet that when Set decides I need something, and I refuse to go along with it, he usually forces the issue. I have written about this particular misadventure elsewhere, and while the memory is strong enough that I could easily retell it, it has been many years now, and I think it’s better said from a closer point of view, so I’m going to cheat a bit and repost some of my original recording here (edited for grammar and clarity issues)

*

04-30-2006

In all fairness, they did give me a heads up that it was coming, and I did get the message. I just didn’t believe it. I had picked up my new cards to do my second ever reading the weekend after I created them and laid out my usual spread. It seemed like a pretty normal reading save for one card laid out in the spot representing the future. The card which came up was Khenty-amenti ‘foremost of the westerners’ a card that I associated as Wesir in his role as ruler of the dead. I jokingly said to myself, “What does that mean? Am I going to die?” No joke. I should have paid more attention.

Less than a week later it started with a high-five from a sick kid at the end of a school day, We were celebrating the end of pre-testing reviews and I was encouraging them to get lots of rest and eat a good breakfast and think positively. I didn’t think much of my sniffling and mild fever, despite that I felt pretty yucky by Friday, and the sick student had gone missing from school. I stopped at the store on my way home and bought some cold tablets figuring I’d spend the weekend sleeping and be better by Monday. I had a good talk with my parents and brother over the phone and then went to bed.

I woke up at 3am with a very high fever. Cursing to myself I got up and took more fever reducer, downed a few glasses of water and went back to bed. What I couldn’t have known was that the fever didn’t go down, and my body didn’t absorb that water. Under the thick covers on my bed, my fever began to cook my body slowly, draining the moisture from organs.

When I woke up the next morning I felt weak and was shivering violently despite the heavy blankets. I checked my temperature, and with more cursing, took more medicine and bathed myself in cool water to bring the fever down. I also consumed half a gallon of apple juice and a few bottles worth of Dasani, attributing my thirst to the fever. A few hours later, the temperature came down to 100 and exhausted, I went back to bed, figuring the worst of it was over. I didn’t notice how frequently I got up to go to the bathroom and down more juice. I didn’t notice that my skin was growing hot to the touch. I didn’t notice how I was getting weaker and weaker. In fact, I didn’t really notice anything until a friend called and woke me from my increasingly deadly slumber.

I talked with her for a while, now somewhat delusional with fever. She could tell something was wrong and suggested that I should call someone, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I thought the fever had gone down. When the shivering started again I said goodbye to her and got up to take more medicine. It was then that I turned on the light and looked in the mirror.

 At first I didn’t even recognize myself, my skin had pulled tight and turned redder than the sun setting in the western sky, not just my face, but all of me. Terrified, I took more medicine, ignoring the dosage restriction, and took another cool bath. This time it didn’t help.

I laid down in my room again, weighing my options, getting weaker by the second. Suddenly I heard a small still voice in me recite the dreaded card from my reading. If you don’t go now you will die here, it said. In a state of panic I called my parents who immediately told me to call a family friend in town, and that failing, to call 911. I called our friend and she raced to my side of town to take me to the hospital. While I waited for her I took another cold bath and sat in front of my fan. I was scared enough to cry, but by that point I didn’t have enough water in my body to make tears.

Adrenalin kicked in to get me out of the apartment and into my friend’s car. I was able to walk into the ER without too needing too much assistance and signed in, but I started to feel woozy while they took my blood pressure and heart rate during the initial processing. My blood pressure was low so the nurse ran the machine again-- doubting the results-- but the second time the machine wouldn’t read it all.

“This machine must be busted.” The nurse told me. “We’re going to take you into triage to use their machine.”

I nodded, at that point, I didn’t care anymore, all I wanted to do was lie down and I said so. But I hobbled into the triage room, feeling dizzy again, and nauseas as well. I got three steps into the room and my body finally gave out completely. I remember someone grabbing me as I fell and slipped into blackness. When I came to, the nurse next to me was trying to get a heart rate with a stethoscope.

“Still no blood pressure,” another said.

“Well, ICU is full, but I don’t think anyone in unit 11 is dying, so we could move someone out and put her there,” a third said from behind me.

I was terrified, I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, and couldn’t understand what was happening. Am I dying? I thought. After a few minutes my family friend noticed me moving my eyes and mouthing silent words.

 “She’s coming back,” she said.

I regained enough strength to mumble my way through some basic questions about allergies and what I had taken that night. Then they quickly wheeled me into ICU. As we sped down the hallway I faded out a bit, starting to feel distant from the world around me. Everything suddenly went white and a large, overwhelming presence touched me.My soul knew him before my mind did.

 Wesir.

I am here, in this. What do you feel?

My inner soul responded first, while my mind struggled to make sense of things. I trust you, it said, take me if it is my time. My mind, with no way to grasp any thought but a simple recognition of his presence, agreed. Then I felt comfort and love from him. It was a beautiful feeling.

 Suddenly, I was back in the hospital, they were striping my clothes off and transferring me to a cot. They put an IV in me right away, trying several times to find a vein that hadn’t recessed into my skin, and bruising me up and down my arms while trying to take blood for testing.

“You are one dehydrated little girl.” The doctor said with great concern, “We’ll do some tests, but I think some chilled saline will do the trick to get you back up and running.”

Some saline was an understatement. Three liters of it latter I was finally re-hydrated enough to look human again. And that was all. I was just dehydrated, gather, nearly to the point of death, but just dehydrated. Seven hours after I was admitted, I walked out of the hospital to go home with my family friend and be treated as an out-patient, but not before the doctor gave me a chilling insight.

“You know, if you had come in about fifteen minutes later, and we would have a real hard time saving you,” he said, “there was a moment there when I thought we hadn’t.”

I spent a week at my friend’s house, recovering slowly from the ordeal. It was several days before I was strong enough to sit up for more than a few hours at a time, much longer before I could walk. I missed a lot of school, but I didn’t even think about that. All I could think about was the contact with Wesir. I kept playing it over and over in my head, trying to understand what had happened. It was dramatic. It was unmistakable. It was life changing. I have never been so sure of anything in my life than I was of the fact that he had touched me in love as my body lay dying.

*

And so it went. In the end I was grateful for the experience and the fringe benefit was an extraordinary sense of calm and peace that lasted through most of the semester (it’s hard to get stressed about anything in life when you have recently been so close to death as to taste your mortality). But that wasn’t the end of my problems balancing my focus on my relationship with Set and my perspective on the rest of the faith…