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The Experience of Egyptian Religion

This year, at the Lammas Faire and Samhain, the SEF offers a unique opportunity to experience the most commonly practiced religious ceremonies of ancient Egypt.

In antiquity, religious observations and magical practice were patterned after myths. The belief was that repeating mythic patterns symbolically would bring about the same results. Every night, the egyptian sun God would bathe in the waters of creation, don His divine apparel and insignia, then ascend into the sky renewed, bringing light and life to the world.

The daily temple rites, the ceremonial purification and investing of the king, the consecration of statues, the awakening of the mummy prior to internment, and certain magical ceremonies, all were derived from and recreated this myth. All share the same ritual pattern and acts, but with text directed to the work at hand.
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The SEF offers the opportunity to participate in two of these types of ritual. First, the consecration of statuary will be presented at the Lammas Faire. This ceremony was performed at the egyptian new year, around the beginning of August. Images and objects so consecrated were thought to be suitable dwelling places for the spirits of the Gods. Modern use of this ritual allows one to develop a closer relationship with the Powers one serves. Participants are encouraged to bring a statue of their Patron deity to be consecrated.

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Is Your Idol Idle?

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When one hears the word idol (in connection with religion), associations include the Hebrew commandment concerning graven images, Christian writers condemning idol worship, iconoclasts destroyed images of their own faith, and so forth.

Given that cultural background, where does that leave us, as modern neopagans?  We all have an abundance of images, statues, etc sitting around our homes, some on altars.  What do we do with them?  How do we regard them?

On the Shabaka stone, dedicated by the Kushite pharaoh Neferkare (711-697BC), Ptah is said to have:

… made their (the God’s) bodies according to their wishes.
Thus the Gods entered into their bodies,
Of every wood, every stone, every clay,…

Thus, in ancient Egypt, idols were not idle.  Images of the Gods, particularly statues, various symbols and objects, structures, and temples were held to be dwelling places of aspects of the Gods’ Spirits.  As such, an image was regarded as a body of manifestation for a God/dess, an avatar of sorts.  This was particularly true if the image had been consecrated and the God/dess invited to inhabit it.  The indwelling Deity was adored, not the image per se.

When asked how best I could draw closer to the Goddess, Michael, my teacher, advised me to stand in front of an image of Her and invoke for five minutes per day.  After experimentation, this invocation took the form of an offering rite, and later in a reconstruction of Egyptian temple ceremonies.  The result was the same as in ancient times, the growing sense of divine Presence within the image and the joy of intimate communion with that Presence.

It makes sense.  Energy follows thought.  Venerating an image of the Divine opens one’s subtle senses to the Divine and focuses the mind.  Perhaps descendant from ancient belief, the western esoteric tradition teaches that if a thought form is sufficiently well formed, one of the Powers may take interest and ensoul it.

The end result is the same, a sense of Presence, the Gods palpably drawn closer.

The Society of Elder Faiths will be performing the Consecration Ceremony at this year’s Lammas Faire.  If you would like to begin or augment a devotional practice, this is a unique opportunity to forge a link with the divine.  We invite you to bring an image of your chosen God/dess and join us August 7th at the Unitarian Church of Marlborough and Hudson.

Click here for more details!

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Full Membership

Full Membership is offered for current Supporting members who have been in good standing for one year or more, and who are active in one or more member-supported committees to support ongoing SEF projects.

As an additional part of their commitment, Full members vote in the election of Directors and other matters of the Society, and may be nominated to serve on the Board of Directors.

Applicants for Full membership must be sponsored by a member of the Board of Directors.  Click here for the Full Member Application.

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Inanna

Inanna Arthen has been an SEF member since 2015. She identified as a Pagan in 1974 and worked with several Pagan organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, including the EarthSpirit Community, Covenant of the Goddess and Church of All Worlds. In 1998, she earned an M.Div degree from Harvard Divinity School, with concentrations in pastoral counseling, small church management and Paganism–her master’s thesis dealt with the legal and practical matters that would be involved in establishing a Pagan church in Massachusetts. She worked as a residential counselor and team leader in a battered women’s shelter for ten years, until she left in 2006 to start a small publishing company, By Light Unseen Media.

Inanna has served as the part-time, openly Pagan minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Winchendon since 2013. Identifying as genderqueer and genderfluid, she completely re-wrote the UUA Welcoming Congregations curriculum and ran the training sessions for UUCW, which was recognized as a Welcoming Congregation by the UUA in 2017. She is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) and the part time administrator for the Unitarian Universalist Society for Community Ministry (UUSCM).

Inanna lives on Lake Monomonac in Winchendon, MA with five rescued cats.