Category: quote

Praise Set, Bringer of Storms, He Who Enjoys Riot, may He always be present in my life.

Blessed Set, He of the Red Hair, King of the Desert, Son of Geb and Father of Anup, may He guide me and protect me, teaching how to See for others who cannot.

I praise thee, O mighty and ever-lasting God, and thank You for my life. I have equipped myself like You, great in strength, Defeater of Darkness.

Praise Set, I thank You, God in my Heart, who taught me how to preserve the force of mind.

He has taught me perseverance and strength, and alongside Him nothing shall prevail that works against me, nothing ceases that I put in motion.

Praise our Lord of the Heavens and Earth! Praise the Lord of the Oasis, the beautiful child of Ra! Praise Set, He who disregards the law!

Mighty Set, Lord of Storms,
Who slays Apep,
No evil may stand before You.
(via childofthedesertstorm)

His text thus reads like a text of the 6th Dynasty when Ma’at was a category of central reference and the discourse on virtue was rooted in and revolved around this fundamental moral category. The text reads: … “The prince and count, truly an intimate of the King whom he loves, Ibi, the justified; He says: you who live on earth. Those who exist and will come after. I will recount to you my good deeds which I have done on earth For I know it is useful … . I did what people love and the divine ones praise. I am here having come to the city of eternity, for I did good on earth…I spoke truth and did justice which God loves. I judged justly between the weak and the strong. I did not allow one greater to take from one more humble than he was…I was generous to everyone, a helper to the fatherless. I nourished the hungry when he came to the prime minister as a petitioner I satisfied the need of a man (even) as a child so it would not happen that he tread upon the place of the widow and reject her need. I turned my face toward the timid when his case came to be heard and his tongue appeared with an effective word. I rejected no one with a petition.”

Ma’at, the Moral ideal in Ancient Egypt

And here again we see the ancients’ emphasis on caring for the weak/vulnerable; on equal treatment for all; and on justice.

(via smarmychristopagan)

What is new in this text, however, is the declaration that “I answered evil with good.” At first glance, this seems to pose a significant challenge to the fundamental Maatian principle of reciprocity which in most cases promises “a like response.” As King Kheti says in his famous Sebait of this period: “A blow is repaid by its like, to every action there is a (similar) response” (123). Or again as Ptahhotep (3 12-3 15) says, there is long life for the Maatian person, but not even a gave for the wrongdoer. However, on second look, one can read the virtue of answering evil with good as another expression of the fundamental Maatian principle of replacing isfet with Maat or in its original form, “putting Maat in the place of isfet.” Thus, one does not give good to evil or as in Christianity, do good for evil. Rather one answers (wfb) or responds to evil by doing a good, i.e., Maat, which replaces and destroys evil. The distinction here is an important one, for the intent is not to reward evil by giving what is not deserved but to create a new moral context by replacing evil with Maat, (rdit mTt m st isft). In a word, the Maatian tradition requires a response that includes doing good and eliminating evil, and answering evil with good fits into this process.

Ma’at, the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt by Maulana Karenga (via smarmychristopagan)

There are gods, who if they catch you groveling at you will scoff in your face. There are gods who abhor worship. There are gods who don’t even require offerings to fulfill requests. There are gods who will tell you to save your food offerings for a starving mortal. There are gods with flaws that give them depth. There are gods who want their authority to be challenged. There are gods who want you to catch them in a lie to prove how discerning you are. There are tricksters and thieves and warriors and oath-takers and deal-makers, and all kinds of gods who prefer getting down in the mud with humans, getting their hands dirty. Gods who require no intercession.

Me, in “Unlearning Western Religion” April 17, 2016  (via bodaciousbanshee)

This is exactly why I love the deities that I do, and why I respect them. I am not interested in gods that are perfect, for I cannot relate to perfection. Show me your flaws and the ways you’ve overcome them, show me you understand the human condition.

(via felis-praecantrix)

In their
tombs, deceased persons are described as imakhu (‘honoured’) by
Osiris: in other words, their needs in afterlife were satisfied because of
their association with him. The concept of imakhu (which can also be
translated as ‘being provided for’) was an expression of a remarkable
moral dictum that ran through all levels of Egyptian society and that
corrected the extreme cases of social inequality: it was the duty of a
more influential and richer person to take care of the poor and socially
disadvantaged in the same wayas the head of a family was responsible
for all of its members.

The Oxford Guide To Ancient Egypt (via the-typhonian)

it was the duty of a more influential and richer person to take care of the poor and socially disadvantaged in the same ways the head of a family was responsible for all of its members.

(via thetwistedrope)

The ancients thought of death as the essential prelude to life. The two form a polarity; one is meaningless without the other, and they alternate in all spheres of nature – among men, animals, vegetation and stars. Death is passing from one kind of time to another – from life yesterday to life tomorrow. What is in the Underworld belongs to death, but it is in a state of becoming, where the ‘form’ or shape of things is given in which they will later “appear.”

Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark (via obsidianservant)

When you find yourself drowning in self-hate, you have to remind yourself that you weren’t born feeling this way. That at some point in your journey, some person or experience sent you the message that there was something wrong with who you are, and you internalized those messages and took them on as your truth. But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and those judgments aren’t about you. And in the same way that you learned to think badly of yourself, you can learn to think new, self-loving and accepting thoughts. You can learn to challenge those beliefs, take away their power, and reclaim your own. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen over night. But it is possible. And it starts when you decide that there has to be more to life than this pain you feel. It starts when you decide that you deserve to discover it.

Danielle Keopke
(via wordsnquotes)

Like You, the great crocodile who rose out of the waters to create land, I will rise out of this mess and create a new life of my own.