Sometimes I sneak into the shrine room like a timid, curious
child and just open the doors of the naos slightly to peak at the statues. Sometimes
I curl up in the big reclining chair--the one in the corner, next to the shelves
that house the library-- and just watch the naos from a distance. It’s curious: how
a temple I built with my own hands doesn’t feel much like it belongs to me or
is part of my home. It is a place I go, not a place I live. I always feel a bit
wrong about going into that place with head held high when I am not in a formal
state of purity, but, like a mischievous little girl, I still sneak in and poke
at things anyway.
They have never chastised me for it, nor withheld their
presence. I mostly get smiles and gentle eyes watching me back. They always
seem happy to see me enter that space—especially when I have made myself rare. They
seem to think I am clean enough, but still…
I prefer to be clean. I shower and keep myself tidy as a
matter of course. I wash my hands often. I keep different clothes for in and
out of the house. These are common things that existed before I knew of Netjer,
before I thought regularly about purity.
The senut shrine stays closed when purity is complicated, and
I sit on the floor in front of Set’s shrine instead. He is informal with me and
does not need the special words or the Natron from the jar by the washroom. A simple
shower is good enough. When I don’t know if I should speak to Him or another of
the Names, I sit in the recliner instead and address the empty space between
the shrines. Sometimes I stare at the dimmed ceiling light instead and sense
Them in the shadows that radiate from it.
Purity is not just a state of being. Purity is an action. Purity
is a choice….that is what I am recently told. It feels like permission, but it
also feels like rules. How can it be both? You can wash physical impurity away…except
when you can’t. You can be imperfectly pure…except when you are too imperfect
and become impure. Is it a matter of intent? Is it a matter of getting “as good
as you can get”? Then why are some things an exception to that?
There is only ever one very heavy day (because I am lucky as
women go) and on all the other days, if I clean thoroughly during my shower, I
have a good 15-20min before any red will show on a fresh pad. Am I pure for
those 15-20min? Or is the fact that I have bled and will shortly bleed again
the source of the impurity? Is it about the blood or is it something more? It’s
not an injury, so if the only concern is the blood itself, and the “germs”
attracted by blood…
Modern technology makes cleaning something different for me than
it was for the ancients. Hot water, indoor plumbing, freshly bleached porcelain
washbasins, anti-bacterial soap, hand held shower heads and high pressure water
settings…I can be far cleaner of “germs” during my time than I would imagine
the average ancient could accomplish on a regular day even if they were wealthy
and never saw the dirt of the grain fields. And not a drop of blood for 20min
afterward. 30-40min on a light day.
But is it purity? I don’t know. And despite obviously having
no problem speaking about this on a blog potentially read by any number of male
strangers, somehow, the fact that there are actual confirmed men in attendance
at the chats keeps me from asking it in that level of detail. So the senut
shrine stays closed because it seems like a silly thing to obsess over and
because I know she probably conducted the chat because she’s probably tired of
getting e-mails about it.
But when I enter the shrine-room, the temple in my home, there
is a shift inside me. There always is. The stress and fear and sadness of day
to day life washes away in a gush as soon as I open the door, leaving only
peace in my breath and calm hovering just under my skin. My Ba flutters and
then grows introspective and quiet, its shadow stretching long into the duat. My
Ka feeds on the energy of that space and my Ib opens its records and recites a graceful,
beautiful part of me that I sometimes forget I have.
This space is a deep well filled flush to the brim with the
cool water of ma’at. I should pause more often and go to that well. But I let
my concerns over my worthiness to perform senut keep me from drinking there. I forget
that, imperfect child though I am, the Names like seeing my small mortal face
peaking through the cracked doors of the naos. I forget that, when I do not
come, they miss the soft pad of my small mortal feet sneaking toward the
recliner beyond the shrines.
I built this space for Them, yes, because they wanted it.
But how soon I forget that They only wanted me to build the temple because They
wanted me to be in it. It is not defined as a place for Them or a place for me.
It is defined as a place for us.
Purity is complicated: it confuses me at times. And senut
confuses me when purity is being a complicated thing. But purity is also
simple. It is washing myself and stepping through the threshold of the temple.
It is breathing the air of that space and drinking of ma’at.
I remember days when none of this was complicated.
I think the real meaning of purity, of my purity at least,
lies somewhere in that memory.
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