Notes from the God Auction

[featherynscale]

Explanation of yesterday's ritual:

Apparently, the Kemetic (Egyptian) New Year corresponds to the rise of the Dog Star and the beginning of flood season. Each year, the people of each city would choose who, among the deities with temples in their city, would be the city's patron god/dess for the year. Essentially, whichever god's temple received the most tribute (money, food, cloth, etc.), would be the patron deity for the year, to be celebrated on feast days not specifically dedicated to a particular god, or on feast days of those gods the city didn't want to celebrate for whatever reason.

So yesterday, to kick off our study of Kemetic Orthodoxy, which is a reconstructionist faith, we had a fund-raiser for Gaia Community in the manner of the patron deity election - four of us represented various gods - Hathor, Thoth, Bast, and Osiris, and generally had a debate/contest/flamewar to see which of us could attract the most donation of money (which went to our operating account) or food (which went to Harvesters).

The congregation chose Osiris, and we raised over $500 and a ton of food, so that's all good.

While we were waiting for people to come in and sit down, the priest/esses portraying gods all sat behind a screen in the back of the room, waiting to be announced. Nobody could see us, and we couldn't see out, but we could hear people's conversations, quite a lot of which were about the deities we were addressing. There was some discussion among the gods about whether or not that was something of what it was really like to be a god - sitting somewhere, unnoticed and unseen, listening to people's talk, and counting up how much of it was about you, and how much of what was being said about you wasn't true.

I represented Bast, who is in charge of an astounding (to me, anyway) range of things including protection of borders, destroying the enemies of the people, guarding mothers in childbirth and young children, and granting the permission/ability for people to continue to have sex in the afterlife, which to the Egyptians was eternal.

Each of the gods had an assistant/scribe/accountant who kept track of how much tribute had been brought to the god. My scribe was chainwoman, and when the final tallies came in and showed that Osiris had won, she wrote something on her tallyboard like "No sex in the afterlife for Gaia Community - better do it now".

Osiris won, Hathor came in second, I came in third, and Thoth, who had no sex in his portfolio, came in last (he did have the best make-up though, which should be some consolation.)

Memo to self: I'd like to post general thoughts on Kemetic Orthodoxy at some point in the near future - it's interesting stuff.

Comments

[kcwitch.livejournal.com]

that unknown lj tag was chainwoman which you do < lj user=chainwoman > only without any spaces except between lj and user. :) so you got to hear me and vicki meow for you. LOL!

[chainwoman.livejournal.com]

:-) Actually, I didn't write the better do it now bit, but it might not have been a bad thing to add... Although, I should have also written there are exceptions because many people were upset at the thought of not getting sex in the after life after giving all of their money to Bast. :-) You gotta love our ecclectic neo-pagans, fuck law and order, we want sex now, sex in the after life, and fertility. :-)