Beliefs, what is a belief?
The Oxford US Dictionary describes it an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists; or (belief in) trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
Belief is not tangible, it’s not something you can hand over to someone, like a warm cup of coffee. Yet, for some, it’s what drives and motivates them, and helps some people get up to face the day. Of course, there are people who don’t have beliefs, and that’s ok too, but that’s a topic for someone else for another day.
For this blogger, belief is something I cannot shake. When I lost my baby half way through pregnancy, I will admit I was a little agnostic. I was angry, and I was hurt. I still don’t know why that happened to me, or why bad things happen to decent people. Through all the pain I was going through, anger at the world and everything in it, including myself, (I lost the baby because of a blood-clot in the placenta, and I went into preeclampsia. Everyone told me I was fine and not to worry, so by the time I got to the hospital when I really became worried, it was too late. They hooked me up to machines, including the heart-rate monitor across my belly. Through that monitor, I watched my baby’s heart-rate go to zero, and there was nothing I could do. My own heart rate was half of what it normally runs, and my blood pressure was nearly doubled. I was later told by my OBGYN that if I hadn’t went to the hospital I could have died or had a massive stroke.) I realized at some point that I could never be an atheist. When I was done with my “I hate the world” phase, I found it was a little difficult to come back to believing in something. It wasn’t resistance from any outside source, it was something within myself that was resisting. It took some time but I finally was able to sort out my feelings and become grounded and centered again.
My beliefs have changed very little over the years, even when I was feeling alone and agnostic. Only the vehicle that carried them was a little different, I suppose you could say. When I finally came to Kemetic Orthodoxy, it was after my period of agnosticism, and I just kind of yelled out into the great unknown (metaphorically, as I was just kind of half-heartedly meditating, and not actually yelling.) that I was still here, and ready to pick up the Torch of Belief again, and forge my way out of the darkness I had been in. In my First Post on this blog, I kind of went over how I got to Kemeticism, so I won’t reiterate it all here. The long and short of it was more or less because of my asking for a sign, or some kind of acknowledgement that I was still welcome in the spiritual world, and I was answered by seeing lots of hawks and other birds of prey. When I began to research what hawks meant in a spiritual way, that pointed me in the direction of Kemetics. I thought the association with Heru-sa-Aset was most profound in meaning to me, and my intuition just kind of grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a little bit… hahahaha! I needed to believe in something, it’s true that sometimes those beliefs help me get out of bed in the morning.
Well thanks to that personal discovery, I came to begin to learn about Kemetic Paganism, and I had begun asking around about Kemetic Orthodoxy. I hadn’t heard much bad-stuff about it, and the little bit of bad-stuff I did hear just sounded petty and not well-founded. So I decided to give it a go. As I was taking the beginner’s class, I had found that more and more of what I was learning sounded like stuff I already put stock into already. Like the concept of Ma’at (truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice) and Isfet (injustice, lie, wickedness, uncleanliness, chaos, to do evil, and the uncreated), and many other things which I already held dear. I won’t bore everyone with all those details, but I’m sure you get the general idea. I had had an interest in Ancient Egypt ages ago, but it had been on a shelf in my brain for so long, it had collected dust and was nearly forgotten about. When I first discovered there was more to paganism than just Wicca (not that there is anything wrong with Wicca, it just wasn’t for me.), and I looked for stuff about Kemetic Paganism (not that I knew it was called that, yet, which could have been why I didn’t find much… lol) I gave up and went with what I could find. It wasn’t until much later (maybe, what, 4 or 5 years ago) that I had even heard of Kemetic Orthodoxy, but I was doing the Asatru thing at the time and wasn’t interested.
I suppose you might be wondering why it seems that I “skipped around a lot” with my path. Well, as I said before in the other post (My First Post), I had to research and find things out for myself. I have also been walking a pagan path for over 20 years now, and back in the 1990’s before the internet was a house-hold name, there were very few resources. I also didn’t really know anyone else interested in such things, and I grew up in a small town that had just as many churches as it did taverns (well, there might have been more taverns than churches), but beyond “Protestant” and “Catholic” I didn’t really know much else existed. I didn’t even know there were Jewish people in the world until 5th or 6th grade when we discussed Hanukkah, because there was a Jewish boy in my grade. My folks just didn’t talk about other religions, and of course they never brought up that it could be my choice to be another religion. So yeah, I was sheltered a little bit (okay, a LOT…) but thankfully I had the will to try to find things out myself. Fortunately, by the time I was in college, I did meet up with some folks who were of different types of Pagan, and I was able to access more on the internet in college in the mid 90’s. I must say though that even as I discovered things, there were still quite a few paths that I didn’t say “OH EM GEE THAT IS SO MEEEE, I MUST CONVERT NOW!” It was only really when something hit me so profoundly and so deeply that I felt I should learn more and delve deeper. Though with the Celtic-type paganism it was a bit more “Well it’s better than nothing…” kind of feel to it, in retrospect at least. It was the most widely discussed kind of path that I was able to find, and I have a lot of Irish ancestry, and so I figured I should stick with that. Though I do have some Irish-Norman ancestry also, so it was also easy for me to rationalize Asatru as a path, since the Normans were descendants of viking conquerors. I have always believed that the Gods will call whom they will, it’s not necessarily due to ancestral blood running in your veins, or the color of your eyes, or whether you have flatfooted feet, or high arches, or a sixth digit on your hand. I don’t know why, honestly, but I’m also not a God. Though, if Gozer the Gozerian ever asked me, yes of course I am! I just have to remember not to cross the streams… lol (FUN FACT: “gozer” means “dude” in Dutch; also another fun fact: “dude” in Africa refers to an ingrown hair on an elephants’ butt, well that’s the legend anyway- I still can’t find definite proof that’s what it means lol.)
Belief is something that should feel like ‘home’ to you, it shouldn’t be forced, and it should feel a lot like an old pair of comfy jeans that are stretched out just right in all the right places, or if you are familiar with “The Big Bang Theory” tv show, it will feel like Sheldon Cooper sitting in “his spot.” It’s a very personal thing, but most will know it when they find it.
As a side note, since I had missed out on the first week of “B”, I’m only going to make this one post on this letter. I had some extenuating circumstances in my personal life that caused me to be unable to post last week.
Prairies and Pyramids 