The First Day

I can’t decide if the timing couldn’t be better or if it couldn’t be worse.

Hip deep in the debris of a kind of mental and metaphysical transformation I wake up to an e-mail in my inbox that would have been far easier to answer to if it had arrived a month ago. Having the RPD option on the table right now seems at once dangerous and a perfect way to speed things up a bit. There is a strong temptation to gain access to yet another little piece of the puzzle while I’m still in those early stages of reformation and foundation building…it could have a significant impact on this reconstruction of me. On the other hand, I’m also buzzing with Set’s energy right now and there is a small chance that doing anything even remotely community related might be disastrous in unforeseen ways.

It leads to a host of other problems as well:

In the interim time since the end of the beginners class, I have wandered away from the shrine room while doing Big Important Work™ on a spiritual level. As is often the case, only His voice is strong enough to reach me out in the open wilds of transformational change. When I do wander back, it is usually to speak to Him and kneel before His altar. Meanwhile, the higher altar, with its myriad images and tokens of other Names (and its Senut supplies) gathers dust on its doors (I know, I know…for shame, for shame!). It reminds me of how our relationship used to be, and at the same time, showcases how very different it is this time around.

When I first started out on my Kemetic path, I obtained two statues for my little home shrine, one of Set, who had been the one to drag me into the faith, and one of Ma’at, because it seemed like a good balance and because I was still experiencing a bit of holdover from my days as a Wiccan and didn’t feel right with a “Lord” but no “Lady”. He was largely tolerant of it and even let me add a Djehuty statue some years later when He poked and prodded me to accept and work with the other members of the pantheon. Still, His statue was always central on the altar and His candle was always lit first and extinguished last. There was never any question about who I was really dealing with most of the time, but I have always had some kind of buffer surrounding Him in the form of other Names and their icons.

I will admit that I was surprised when He allowed me to remove Him from the main shrine and put Him in the smaller shrine off to the side so I could have a generic Senut altar. It shouldn’t have been a surprise at all. Because this grand experiment of having the dual shrines has mostly accomplished getting me on the floor in front of His icon alone.  It occurred to me that this may be exactly what He wanted all along. As if, now that I’ve been around to visit the rest of the pantheon and have fully accepted the reality of their existence and their resultant impact on me, it’s time to take the training wheels off and learn exactly what it means to be under His thumb exclusively.

In this line of thinking, the RPD could be a bit problematic for obvious reasons. True, there is no obligation to take the vows that would naturally follow, so if I don’t think I can be true to my lineup I can simply remain a divined Remetj until He and I can work it out. But I’ll be honest: I’m almost as much afraid of His name coming up as I am of it not. I stand to lose the only card I had to play. Because if He is in my lineup, my last out (for what I sense that He has planned for me) will vanish in a puff of smoke and I have a feeling that, if and when that happens, things will lurch ahead and start rolling at a pace I may not be prepared for. (As if one can truly be prepared for anything that He has His hand in, I know, but still…)

It’s strange. I’ve gone from fearing that my RPD might be “wrong” to fearing it might be “right”.

But if He isn’t in the lineup…well, that changes things a bit in another way. It doesn’t release me from my obligations to Him, but it does reinstate that buffer that once existed between us—and a stronger version to boot. Though, now that I think on it, technically even if He was divined to be one of my Parents that “buffer” would be reinstated as a matter of course since He is never a single Parent. Still, the effect would definitely be more dramatic if He didn’t show in my lineup at all.

That sort of comforts me…and worries me…and confuses me. Which, oddly, is the same way I feel about Himself most of the time.

I’ve pretty much decided I’ll go through with it—not because it is wise or unwise but because I am curious and because curiosity is like a drug for me. In fact, there was probably never really a question of whether I would or not. This is just the beginning of my thinking out loud as I meditate for the required time. I’m not going to give away anything that is in the document or process (that is not also freely available on the public parts of the forum), but for those “in the know” so to speak, you’ve probably caught on to my answer for the first question by now.

(I've answered them all already, but I've decided to take one a day and really reflect on and think about my answers.)