The Te Velde thing has been on my mind, and it has been
bothering me in that manner that a determined biting fly bothers a potential
blood donor. When it became clear that
other things weren’t going to get done until I dealt with it, I finally succumbed
and started re-reading the text. The first thing I would like to say in the
aftermath of that is: I am so sorry.
Seriously. I’m sorry for throwing around the recommendation to
read it as if it actually answered any questions about who Set is in our modern
faith and why He isn’t still regarded (as He was in the late periods of Kemet’s
history) as “the evil one”.
I can’t help but be a bit shamed that I keep sourcing my
arguments to Te Velde when it turns out that a lot of my arguments come not directly
from him but from years of piecing together scraps out of many texts and
filling in the holes with UPG and modern philosophy. Te Velde is a rare book in that it is out of print and
(unless one is willing to break a few copyright laws) difficult to get a hold
of. Citing it vaguely to support an argument is shady because few people are
going to have the means to check the source. And because I loathe that
particular sort of dishonesty, I have checked it for you and determined that,
while it has a lot of great information to be sure, it also makes a point more
or less opposite of mine when taken as a whole and not chopped apart and
removed from context.
To poke some fun at one of my earlier statements: I may
not dismember people but, apparently, I do occasionally dismember sources. Especially when it has been a long time since I've read them.
I remember Te Velde as a landmark source which held many breakthroughs in perspective for me. And true, there are actually a lot of points in Te Velde that I agree
with, but an equal if not greater number with which I take issue. His work is
interesting in that it pulls together all the disparate bits and pieces that
have been written about Set and tries to make something out of the mess. I will
say that I do like having the mess all together in one place and for that, the
book is an invaluable resource. However, I greatly dislike the forcibly and
precariously balanced structure he makes out of all those odds and ends. I also
dislike the amount of hand waving he does at other Egyptologists’ theories with
the argument that they simply don’t fit his paradigm of the "most likely" scenario (and perhaps more importantly, that they don’t support his argument).
In any case, I stray from the core of the issue which is
this: I have been selling snake oil by recommending this book to those who wish
to come to a real understanding of my Father’s nature. It is clear to me that
to make peace with myself over this; I need to do two things:
1) Summarize Te Velde’s theories (with proper sourcing) and
show clearly which parts I am using in my personal practice and which parts I
disagree with and why (also with proper sourcing) and put the whole thing up on
the blog so that it is accessible.
2) Round up all the things that have gone into my personal interpretation
of my Father’s Mythos and lay that out publically as well, so that others can properly
form their own opinions about whether I am a on the up and up or not.
This will take some time. It may take all of 2013 and will certainly
not be an exclusive project for the whole of that time because it is not the
only thing on my plate. I think I’m going to try and do this the same way
others are doing the pagan blog project and make this a weekly installment
thing. We’ll see, since some parts will be harder than others and it make take
more than a week in between to get my thoughts in order. I plan to start by
ripping Te Velde’s work apart and really getting into the particulars of it. Then,
hopefully, I can pull together my alternate sources and try to mark the path I
took to my current understanding of Set so others can follow if they want to.
That’s a tall order, but we’ll see... I just might be up to
the task. ;)
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