Building a Mystery
The Mysteries of Asar started this past week and that got me thinking
about the nature of the Mysteries and how I was going to attempt to
celebrate them this year.
Originally, I wasn’t going to do anything for them, but on Thursday
night, I got a huge drive to suddenly set up my… shrine… area? the way
that I used to. It became such a strong feeling that I couldn’t ignore
it anymore. Since it’s not the traditional format for setting up the
shrine, I thought I’d share it here- just in case anyone else wanted to
try it themselves.
This idea isn’t originally mine. I got it from my SO, and I have no
clue where he got the idea from. When I learned about how he goes about
this, I knew nothing about Kemeticism, the Egyptian calendar or it’s
holidays. But it felt right at the time, and the more I’ve learned over
the years, the more I have felt that it feels right. So more and more, it’s what I do.
When we originally did this- we did it on the last New Moon in
February (or if it happened on say, March 1- we’d do it then). We would
take up O’s statue and wrap him in a particular blue cloth that we have.
We’ve used it on our altar to represent water in the past. And
generally speaking, it is O’s cloth. No two ways about it. The night of
the New moon, we take this cloth and we wrap O in it. Covering all of
his icon up. We then set it on the shrine, leave an offering, spend a
few minutes, and leave him there. And he stays there for a month. The
next Full moon, we unwrap him, give him a big offering feast, and
celebrate. Then things return to normal.
Over the years, I’ve found that little nuances in this ritual just
make sense to me. February is the time right before Spring starts. It’s
right before things really start to get fertile (in most of the US,
anyways). Unlike here in the late Fall- it will take months for things
to start to grow. So for us, Feb fit the bill. The New Moon is when the
moon is hidden. This is when O disappears from sight. And he stays
hidden for quite some time. In some ways, unwrapping him at the Full
moon makes sense- but I can understand the full month as well. The cloth
also succeeds in hiding him. The blue could easily be water. His
drowning. So for me, it makes sense.
So that is what I have done for this year. The other night, as I
wrapped him up, tears overcame me- for whatever reason. I let them flow,
unsure as to their origin. I thanked him for his sacrifice. And I told
myself he would be back soon. For now, Set has been moved away from his
statue, and in the future, O will be kept inside my box while Set takes a
trip outside of the box. I think in the future, I won’t open that
shrine case for the entire month. Leaving the offerings outside,
instead. It will be interesting to see what a formal shrine will do to
this ritual next year.
That is my current plan. O is currently wrapped up and I look forward
to unveiling him in a few weeks time. I will be sure to leave him a
nice large offering at that point, to celebrate his return.
If you want a more accurate representation of what happened at the
Mysteries. According to my Abydos book, there was often a
parade/pilgrimage from Abydos proper to Umm el’Qaab. This was the
supposed location of O’s tomb (though it’s likely the tomb of a first
dynasty pharaoh). During this procession, there would be agents of Set
hiding along the path- trying to ‘stop’ the followers of O from getting
to the tomb. I guess they’d fight these people off and work their way to
the tomb where they’d perform some type of rite, which isn’t very
clear. It’s interesting, though. Everyone want to go pretend beat
eachother up in the name of Order overcoming Chaos? XD