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smarmykemetic · 6 years

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anon bc my kemetic blog is a sideblog; I dont understand this (message 1/2 or 3) Re: "disrespecting the NTRW" thing; I've read so many sources on people getting angry at them, threatening them & their temples like...obv it's not good to do that but i feel like they would understand if humans feel hard done by and pissy. Not to say they wouldnt *also* be angry that youre arguing or outright threatening them but its not like the way it is in christian spirituality (as far as i understand)

(2/2 unless i add more) and then as far as i know, thru my own research people also applied their own ideas to the NTRW all the time and joked with/about them??? And i feel like all-powerful or not- everyone enjoys a damn joke. And the “politics=/=religion thing” weirds me out too bc kemetic (place, not religion necessarily) politics was innately tied w their religion because their religion kind of like WAS their society. The NTRW influenced every aspect of fckn everything.

(since you haven’t sent anything else im just publishing like this lol)

I agree, for the most part. Based on the sources we have, it’s up to the individual practitioner (and their gods, naturally) what kind of piety requirements, if any, are enforced. We have hymns and poems naming the gods as perfect, beyond reproach, deserving of eternal adoration; we have written records of insulting the gods being considered a crime and punished accordingly. Then we have some myths that pretty clearly portray the gods as doing silly or immoral things (i.e. The Contendings), which even if you insist these are not “real myths” but political satire, still indicates that in antiquity, these kinds of irreverent jokes and portrayals of gods were…well, maybe not common, but at least on some level accepted. You have the portrayal of Set, which changed based on a period’s politics, sometimes going so far as to call him literally evil or equate him with A/pep itself, often myths centered around not only Set’s defeat, but his humiliation -which should count as unacceptable blasphemy against a netjer the way the kemetic piety-police-wannabes act, but it is undeniably something that happened in antiquity. Then we have the spells and rites where people threaten the gods, talk about eating them in the Cannibal hymns, or even call themselves the gods as a way of achieving a magical end. Talking about in any way overpowering the gods, or being ‘equal’ to them (even only in a ritual sense of taking on their mantle for a spell), is exactly the kind of thing that gets these people’s panties in a bunch, but I mean. The ancients #did that. Are we supposed to ignore historical precedent because it makes people uncomfortable, or doesn’t sound respectful enough for somebody’s pious sensibilities?

The historical records we have, to me, show that there is a diversity of acceptable, historically-verified ways of interacting with the netjeru in different situations. But people seem to hold the first example as the only kind of historical interactions with the gods that modern practitioners are “allowed” to engage in. Some people even seem to think that they have the right to assert that the NTRW “wish that hubris was part of kemeticism”, which sounds A) unlikely, since they had millenia of state religion to make such an idea part of their theology if they wanted to; B) ahistorical, since while the idea of being disrespectful and arrogant is certainly found in the ancients’ writings on ma’at (usually uhmmm talking about how people should treat each other but whatevs I guess), the Greek idea of “hubris” was just that, a Greek idea, not an Egyptian one, and C) pretty goddamn arrogant for a human to speak for their gods unilaterally, using their UPG literally to say that how other people are practicing and believing is wrong, even as they’re claiming not to. (Yes, this is in response to one person’s recent statements in particular, but I’m keeping my response to this pretty clear vagueing on this person’s part also a vaguepost, because I genuinely don’t think there’s anything to gain through a real argument.)

This kind of rhetoric, in my opinion, claims to be “for the gods’ benefit” while is really more focused around the tastes of one group of kemetic practitioners, wanting their particular religious practice and ideas -which, to be clear, are no better and no worse than anyone else’s- to be “the gold standard”, and everyone else’s to be categorized as lesser, heretic even. I think it’s more likely that the gods want some people to be more formal and reverent in their practice than others, and they should be supported and celebrated for doing so, but well. We aren’t all priests. We aren’t all the same, and we shouldn’t try to be.

And yeah trying to claim that politics and religion should be completely separated is ludicrous because not only is ‘separation of the Church and State’ something that only became the norm (allegedly, as it doesn’t really happen much irl) over the last few centuries, but “politics” basically encompasses or at least affects every single aspect of human existence anyways. Just like how Evangelical Christians in America have largely erased the political implications of Christ’s sermons against greed and his commands to care for the poor, modern-day kemetics want to erase the political implications of the tenets of ma’at that command us to care for the beggar and the orphan, not to wink at (close your eye to) injustice. They want to water the concept of ma’at down from a powerful moral imperative to keep us fighting for justice and actively working to create a world of harmony, into a safe little idea about reverence for the gods, correct ritual practice, and being ~nice and polite~ regardless of the situation.

To Ammit with all that bullshit.

#asks #anonymous #kemetic #ma'at #piety #that's a little joke btw im not actually calling for anyone to be damned #or have their hearts eaten in other words

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