If you've worked with these dieties for some time then why do you need academic validation? If you like what you've 'seen' then take what you want. The academics can only give their best guess based on relics and trends.
Not professor DuQuesne. I might be wrong, but from what I've read, I have a strong feeling he is actually working with Wepwawet in the pagan sense of the word. Or at least magical. Until relatively recently, that would have been the norm among intellectuals - the founder of Czech Egyptology was involved in magic and was quite famous in those circles :o)
I get the feeling you're new to this community... :-)
I'll say this a little more gently than others might: part of being a responsible and intellectually honest pagan is making at least some sort of effort to see if your personal UPG actually accords with historically known reality.
Personal spiritual experience is inherently subjective, and before being too hasty to accept it as "reality", it's a good idea to fact-check your impressions and see if they are actually consistent to any degree with the reality that exists outside your head.
That'd be where the "nonfluffy" part of nonfluffypagans comes in.
BTW, hopefully it was clear that my comments were directed to the other commenter, not to your post, which I thought was entirely reasonable. I was slightly amused at how very carefully worded your post was, but having seen some of the dramastorms around here, I could fully understand why.
Perhaps but spirituality in and of itself is a highly subjective area. The first being to imagine the greater powers did not check their work in a textbook and was all the more free to believe as they chose because of it. History can be both a scaffold and a trap for one's beliefs. If I had worked with a deity for a long time I would go as my heart told me rather than seek verification. But I understand that is not everyone's choice.
I always took 'nonfluffy' to mean unobsessed with the smiley face sticker that some would slap on the scope of pagan thought, not as constraining ideas and UPG's to the shackles of the opinions of others.
Perhaps but spirituality in and of itself is a highly subjective area. The first being to imagine the greater powers did not check their work in a textbook and was all the more free to believe as they chose because of it. History can be both a scaffold and a trap for one's beliefs. If I had worked with a deity for a long time I would go as my heart told me rather than seek verification.
I see what you mean, but wouldn't you agree that working with Egyptian deities, i.e. deities that have already "been here" before, one should try to find as many resources as one can to see what one's dealing with?
That's a very good point you make about working with highly established deities. There is obviously a lot of personal preference in what you are willing to accept. I follow the Norse pahtheon of gods myself and had a very stringent view of the gods as I saw them until someone loaned me a copy of the book 'The Norse Myths as told by Uncle Einar' by Jane Sibley. It puts a humorous spin and a modern reflection on the old myths. I am sure that a hard core reconstructionist might have been furious with the book but it reminded me that the gods change over the ages and that they too have a sense of humor. Either way you look at it though; a hard interpretation of what was or an changing godscape as minds evolve, the powers don't seem to mind. :)
Not everything can be learned or taken from books. There's a certain amount of spirituality there.
I took it as "nonfluffy" as not being pagan stereotypical in some ways. Like that we all don't rely on psuedo-historical research of a New Ager who offers no citations, that we all have realistic views rather than overtly positive ones, (Like that all goddess are really benevolent mother goddesses or fit into the maiden,mother, crone idea.), (etc) basically that we were less hippie-ish.
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I'll say this a little more gently than others might: part of being a responsible and intellectually honest pagan is making at least some sort of effort to see if your personal UPG actually accords with historically known reality.
Personal spiritual experience is inherently subjective, and before being too hasty to accept it as "reality", it's a good idea to fact-check your impressions and see if they are actually consistent to any degree with the reality that exists outside your head.
That'd be where the "nonfluffy" part of nonfluffypagans comes in.
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BTW, hopefully it was clear that my comments were directed to the other commenter, not to your post, which I thought was entirely reasonable. I was slightly amused at how very carefully worded your post was, but having seen some of the dramastorms around here, I could fully understand why.
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I always took 'nonfluffy' to mean unobsessed with the smiley face sticker that some would slap on the scope of pagan thought, not as constraining ideas and UPG's to the shackles of the opinions of others.
Reply
I see what you mean, but wouldn't you agree that working with Egyptian deities, i.e. deities that have already "been here" before, one should try to find as many resources as one can to see what one's dealing with?
Reply
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I took it as "nonfluffy" as not being pagan stereotypical in some ways. Like that we all don't rely on psuedo-historical research of a New Ager who offers no citations, that we all have realistic views rather than overtly positive ones, (Like that all goddess are really benevolent mother goddesses or fit into the maiden,mother, crone idea.), (etc) basically that we were less hippie-ish.
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