Post by Mysti on Jul 6, 2007 7:08:20 GMT -5
While not tampering with the texts themselves, one adaptation which we have been obliged to make is to compose the rites so that they are suitable for use by modern Pagans Living in Britian. For this they have to fit the seasons as we experience them here in Britain today. Most modern Pagans mark the seasonal changes by celebrating the Greater and Lesser Sabbats, or solstices, equioxes, and the cross-quarter days called Celtic Fire Festivals. In total there are eight festivals, evenly distributed round the year.
It is important to recognize that the ancient Egyptians did not celebrate all these festivals, or in the cases where they had a festival at the same time of the year as we do, it did not necessarily have the same significance. The most radical difference is that the Egyptian harves festival was in the spring, and the ploughing and seed-planting festival was in the autumn; summer was the dead time of year, and winter was the time of firtility. If we were to place the rites at the time of year when the Egyptians would have celebrated them, this would be the complete reverse of seasonal conditions over most of the world's northern hmeispher today. The reason for this is that there were unique circumstances in Egypt caused by the flooding of the Nile, which fertilized an otherwise barren land.
Egyptian Pagan mythology is intrinsically connected to the natural environment of Egypt. The country was called the Two Lands, which ostensibly referred to Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt; but it also referred to the Black Land of the Nile's flood plain and the Red Land of the sesert. ('The Two Lands' may also have referred to heaven and earth, for the Egyptians thought of their country as being an image of the heavens, with the Nile corresponding to the Milky Way.) The Red Land, where humans could die of thirst and hunger under the relentlessly burning heat of the sun, was the domain of the red-haired Set, god of chaos and distruction. The Black Land was the domain of his gentle brother Osiris, who, in his name of Great Black, was the principle of dormant fertility in the cthonic realm, and, in his name of Great Green, was the principle of resurrection sprouting in the plant growth which turned the Black Land green ater the retreat of the annual inundation. During the summer months, the heat of the blazing sun would shrivel all vegetation and parch the earth; for a while it would seem that the desert threatened to encroach on the habitable land, like red Set murdering his green brother Osiris. At the end of the summer, the Nile would flood--a momentous event which happened to correspond to the heliacal(dawn) rising of Sirius(or Sothis), the star of Isis, wife of Osiris-- and so Isis found her dead husband in the black fertile soil emerging from the retreating flood-waters like the primordial mound or ben-ben on which the Creator stood at the dawn of the wrold. So was Maat, the divine principle of order, restored to the land after the devistation. The newly-planted seed began to sprout as Osiris when Isis restored him to life and conceived their son Horus--who was not only the sun god in heaven, but was incarnated on eath in the pharaoh, the legitimacy of whose reign was symbolized each time the desert retreated like the vanquished tyrant Set when Horus defeated him and assumed his rightful place on the throne.
The seasonal religious rites of the Egyptians, therefore, celebrate the actions of the gods--the neteru --both as there were in the First Time and as these actions are repeatedly made manifest in the workings of nature.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon
It is important to recognize that the ancient Egyptians did not celebrate all these festivals, or in the cases where they had a festival at the same time of the year as we do, it did not necessarily have the same significance. The most radical difference is that the Egyptian harves festival was in the spring, and the ploughing and seed-planting festival was in the autumn; summer was the dead time of year, and winter was the time of firtility. If we were to place the rites at the time of year when the Egyptians would have celebrated them, this would be the complete reverse of seasonal conditions over most of the world's northern hmeispher today. The reason for this is that there were unique circumstances in Egypt caused by the flooding of the Nile, which fertilized an otherwise barren land.
Egyptian Pagan mythology is intrinsically connected to the natural environment of Egypt. The country was called the Two Lands, which ostensibly referred to Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt; but it also referred to the Black Land of the Nile's flood plain and the Red Land of the sesert. ('The Two Lands' may also have referred to heaven and earth, for the Egyptians thought of their country as being an image of the heavens, with the Nile corresponding to the Milky Way.) The Red Land, where humans could die of thirst and hunger under the relentlessly burning heat of the sun, was the domain of the red-haired Set, god of chaos and distruction. The Black Land was the domain of his gentle brother Osiris, who, in his name of Great Black, was the principle of dormant fertility in the cthonic realm, and, in his name of Great Green, was the principle of resurrection sprouting in the plant growth which turned the Black Land green ater the retreat of the annual inundation. During the summer months, the heat of the blazing sun would shrivel all vegetation and parch the earth; for a while it would seem that the desert threatened to encroach on the habitable land, like red Set murdering his green brother Osiris. At the end of the summer, the Nile would flood--a momentous event which happened to correspond to the heliacal(dawn) rising of Sirius(or Sothis), the star of Isis, wife of Osiris-- and so Isis found her dead husband in the black fertile soil emerging from the retreating flood-waters like the primordial mound or ben-ben on which the Creator stood at the dawn of the wrold. So was Maat, the divine principle of order, restored to the land after the devistation. The newly-planted seed began to sprout as Osiris when Isis restored him to life and conceived their son Horus--who was not only the sun god in heaven, but was incarnated on eath in the pharaoh, the legitimacy of whose reign was symbolized each time the desert retreated like the vanquished tyrant Set when Horus defeated him and assumed his rightful place on the throne.
The seasonal religious rites of the Egyptians, therefore, celebrate the actions of the gods--the neteru --both as there were in the First Time and as these actions are repeatedly made manifest in the workings of nature.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon