Category: quote

I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.

Julian the Philosopher,  in “To the Cynic Heracleios" 
(via honorthegods)

To willingly sacrifice yourself as an offering to God you must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire. You must be willing to experience what the altar represents— burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose— the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God.

But you don’t eliminate it, God does. See to it that you don’t wallow in self-pity once the fire begins. After you have gone through the fire, there will be nothing that will be able to trouble or depress you. When another crisis arises, you will realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do.

Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.

Oswald Chambers (via deartotheheart)

As a guiding principle maat is a point of orientation or a standard of measurement; it is the “ought” against which the “is” of life is ruthlessly and repeatedly measured and almost always found lacking.

Erik Hornung, “Idea into Image,” p.143 (via bigbadjackal)

It remains for us to consider the relationship between the name of Anubis and inpw, the word for ‘royal prince’. Such a relationship certainly exists, whether or not the term is connected with the term rnp ‘to be or to become young’, as has been suggested.

DuQuesne, The Jackal Deities (via the-typhonian)

Like their own human subjects, the Egyptian gods could eat and drink (sometimes to excess), they could work, fight, think, speak and even cry out in despair. They could interact well or poorly and could exhibit anger, shame and humour…

The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H Wilkinson.
(via igamuinacra)

A peculiar feature of Egyptian magic was that threats might not be directed only at forces causing the problem, but at the deities who were asked to intervene. Once spell warns that no offerings will be made on the divine altars if the gods don’t make the magic work. A love charm ends with a threat that Busiris … will be burned if the client does not get what he wants.

In myth, Orisis was the most vulnerable of the gods and this is exploited in magic. In the Book for Banishing an Enemy, Osiris is threatened with not being allowed to journey to his two sacred sites (Busiris and Abydos) … The magician even threatens to take on the role of Seth and destroy the body of Osiris. …

The most direct way to influence a god was to interfere with their cult. Deities are sometimes threatened with the pollution and desecration of their temples and the slaughter of their sacred animals. …
The magician usually protects himself by saying ‘it is not me that is saying this but X’ – X being the god whose role he is playing in the rite. This suggests that even though it was only role playing, the Egyptians themselves had doubts about this procedure. Words were powerful, so such formulae might actually damage ma’at.

Possibly these formulae are not so much threats as predictions. The magician is speaking on behalf of humanity; reminding heaven that if people are not regularly cured and protected that they will lose faith in the gods and cease to make offerings, maintain the temples, and respect sacred animals. The magician is only demanding the enforcement of a kind of divine contract. If the gods do not help mankind, the whole divine order will collapse.

Magic in AE, Pinch, pg 73-75
(via thetwistedrope)

Yeah, the usual formula for asking the gods (or a dead relative) to intervene was 1) remind the god how faithful you had been and how many offerings you had provided, 2) ask for what you wanted, and 3) threaten to stop making offerings if he/she didn’t help.

But this formula was usually followed by common folk, not royalty.

(via wingsofmaat)

Everything heals. Your body heals. Your heart heals. The mind heals. Wounds heal. Your soul repairs itself. Your happiness is always going to come back. Bad times don’t last.

Christiana Rutkowski

gentle reminder

(via light-essence)

5 things to quit this week:
– Trying to please everyone.
– Fearing change.
– Living in the past.
– Putting yourself down.
– Overthinking.

(via annaaaaa94)