We’re still in the first month. I’m allowed to say Happy New Year if we’re still in the first month.

I celebrated the New Year on August 7th this year. In addition, I led a service at my UU church on the New Year, which was supposed to happen on August 2nd (Heru-Wer’s Day in my neck of the woods) but which had to be delayed until August 23rd because my doctor’s surgical center had the audacity to schedule my foot surgery on July 28th. I wasn’t in a position to say no because my doctor only gets one day a month to do surgery at this place, so it was this or wait another month. And my foot was doing poorly enough that I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I had to go with the earlier surgery date, which has thrown most everything off ever since. I don’t regret having had the surgery, just the timing. (It was a bunionectomy on my right foot for the purpose of correcting the bunionectomy I’d had done in 2023, which ironically delayed that year’s Kemetic New Year service also.)

I wanted to be especially sure to post on the New Year this year because I finally got around to following Devo’s example and making a cloth offering to Aset (https://thetwistedrope.tumblr.com/post/181427541398/new-year-fabric-a-band-for-aset-heka). Technically, only the embroidery is done; I was going to finish it like a sash, which I can do in time for the civil new year, right? (Translation: I’ll be doing the final hemming on December 31, 2026. Let’s get real here, guys!)

The actual embroidery is nothing to write home about, I’m afraid. I’m a little out of practice:

As you can see in the first photo, I did my rite exclusively to Aset, and I think She really appreciated the cloth, even though it wasn’t finished. I think making and offering the cloth deepened my experience of the rite that day.

The UU service was interesting. Our services usually include a Time For All Ages – a story geared mostly toward kids that illuminates some aspect of the service. Originally, I wanted to link to a YouTube video about the Contendings Between Horus and Seth, since that seems to be foundational to the Unyear and my faith in general. But oh boy. Those videos are either inaccurate, unsavory, or both. I grabbed my copy of The Contendings from The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 3rd edition, and I went through and created a list of each event in the story, blow by blow. And I realized at that point that it would be easier for me to just write a story that we could present on our own. It became a skit called “Horus vs. Seth: The Battle for the Throne of Egypt.” I enlisted someone to read the part of Heru, and our worship coordinator enlisted someone to read Seth.

And then we ran into a bit of trouble.

My actor for Heru panicked about the part where Heru chops off his mother’s head. How would the kids react? I emailed her back saying, “Our worship coordinator works with kids all the time [they’re also our Director of Religious Education, so they work directly educating the kids and making sure they feel included in the service]. Surely they know what kids can handle?” But my actor was insistent and asked if I would mind if she voiced her concerns to our worship coordinator. I consented, and thus ensued some of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in association with my time being a UU. My gods have been explicit that They wanted me to join forces with the UUs, especially while my temple was dormant. But now it was my turn to feel panicked and threatened. The gods tried to reassure me, to caution patience (which I suck at – I’m basically a cat in human skin. Patience? WTF is that?). I cried in the arms of my husband. The worship coordinator came back with a request for a content warning. And since we’re always trying to be straightforward with our families and allow them to have the tools to decide what’s best for them, I eventually had to agree with the logic behind such a warning.

You know what? No one left the sanctuary. All that anguish was for exactly naught. Everyone liked the skit – the references to Heru and Seth becoming hippos drew the expected laughs – and all the feedback I got on the service was nothing but positive, aside from some confusion in keeping all the gods straight, which I own and I will address better in future services.

But (although this came after the Time For All Ages) I also made sure to include my temple’s guidance on the thought behind the need for Heru’s severing of Aset’s head:

“When Set killed [Osiris], [Aset] searched tirelessly for his body, and with it became pregnant with Heru. She planned and fought and schemed to ensure Heru’s assumption of the kingship, and he rewarded her by cutting off her head. By this action, he asserted his royal destiny, incorporating into himself Set’s energies, thus maturing into a balanced, disciplined king.”

Ultimately I did have to realize that my faith is, to most people, a weird and sometimes unsettling one. Most people will require education to understand the theological underpinnings of our faith. I’m not a theologian, but I can rely on the guidance given to me when our temple was still active.

And yes, I’m having to translate for most folx: Osiris = Wesir, Isis = Aset, etc. That’s getting a little bit old, to be honest (again, the patience of a cat – a cat waiting to be fed, at that), and I think for my next service I want to include a cheat sheet in the Order of Service so I don’t have to do the mental gymnastics, and maybe I can bring everyone along with me as I continue to introduce them to the beauties of Kemeticism.

Oh, and the reading was Chapter 52 from Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The chapter is called The Apes of Dawn. The one who did the reading was also my actor for Heru, and she did beautifully with this. I watched her from behind as she held her hands up to the light during the first paragraph, and by the end she had me clutching my hands with joy:

“Across the river the apes gather, sitting quietly on their haunches, facing east, waiting for dawn. It is not yet light; a mist hangs above the river and the air is gray. They murmur and scratch themselves awake. First light breaks. A thin beam flies toward the hilltop and each animal raises his palms. Light slides through his fingers. He clutches air. Then the chorus begins.

“A wise man wakes thus each morning, piercing his heart with light, empowering himself through the day. Swallows rise and dip above the river. The empty shells of trees and houses fill with color. The soul enters the body. The curtain of serpents parts. Time stands still, then rolls backwards. It is the first day.

“You were once that innocent – a babe shrugging off the sleep of the tomb, wailing for the moon, reaching toward light. We veil ourselves in the world’s illusion; we learn how to forget.

“I join the apes on the hill, facing east on my haunches. Quick light tumbles the wall of night. We raise our arms and howl. We summon the disk to appear and soon the sun crests the hill. In one moment the world has changed. We sing loudly of what we have seen. We tremble, mouths filled with light. Our song rings through eternity.

“In the village below the people leave their houses, yawn, scratch and look about. “See!” one shouts. “There’s that old fool with the apes again.” The people stir and shake off sleep. We shout and keep shouting – the apes and me – until one by one we’ve awakened all those who otherwise would sleep through miracles.”

If you’ve never read Awakening Osiris, it comes with my highest recommendation. The entire book is like this – such beautiful poetry it will knock your socks off. I just read it over and over; I think I’m on my eighth reading. It’s just so beautiful that I can’t get enough of it, even if it weren’t a sacred text of my faith. And I know – the translator, Normandi Ellis, says she hesitates to call it a translation. I took this to my priest when she was still on the grid and she said it’s okay, that it means something to me so it almost doesn’t matter if it is an accurate translation.

My homily came after the reading. With recent progressive primary wins in my home state of Florida fresh in my mind, I ended it this way:

“So as UUs, can we draw anything from all this? I don’t know, but I myself feel like there is a change in the air, the beginning of a change. The tide is beginning to turn against this administration. Progressives have had some wins in recent primary elections. Maybe things are beginning to turn in the direction of ma’at.

“It’s the start of a new year. A time of renewal. A new day dawning.

“Don’t sleep through it.”

Happy new year.

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Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Copyright 1988 by Normandi Ellis. This quote of the entirety of Chapter 52 is in no way intended to infringe on the author’s rights.