Happy Birthday, Nephthys!

It’s very fitting that on this fifth and final of the ancient Egyptian Epagomenal Days (according to my reckoning of the Cairo Calendar), this liminal time between the year that is ending and the one that is beginning, that we celebrate the birth of the Great Goddess Nebet-Het (Nephthys), Wife of Set, Sister to Auset and Ausar, Mother of Anpu (Anubis). She is “the Lady of the House,” i.e., the embalming tent, the mourning kite and funerary goddess, the One Who Welcomes Those Who Enter Amenti.

I truly do believe in my heart that She Wyrdly marked me, to borrow the words of Edgar Allan Poe, “from childhood’s hour.” The parade of funerals in my own blood family starting from my early childhood (and shocking deaths too, I might add, such as my being the first person to surprisingly discover my maternal grandfather’s body after he had hung himself; I was 8 years old at the time) were, in hindsight, an Ordeal Path that ultimately baptized me into Her service. Her eerily-lit Underworld pathways are not for everyone but I look back on none of those profound episodes of loss with self-pity. Nephthys is absolutely my heart’s delight, and the Chief Power to Whom I dedicated myself for lifelong service when I became ordained as a Priestess in the Fellowship of Isis nine years ago. She is also the Patroness of my Death Midwife work.

The Mystery, Majesty, and Moral Ambivalence of the Great God Set

According to the way I reckon the old Cairo Calendar, today is the Third of the Five Epagomenal Days, sacred days set aside as certain Gods’ (the Children of Geb and Nut) birthdays during the liminal period of the old year ending but the new year (Wep Ronpet) not having yet begun. (The New Year in ancient Egypt was calculated by the heliacal rising of the star Sirius, which usually takes place between what we know now as August 1-3.) Day Three of the Epagomenal Days commemorates the birth of my most cherished Kemetic Holy Power: red-hot, ultra-dynamic, take-no-bullshit SET!

Come Check Out My Workshop on Ancient Egyptian Magic at the 2019 Chicago Pagan Pride!

This year, Chicago Pagan Pride will take place on Saturday, September 28. It’s being held at a new venue in the city: Que4 Studios, 2643 W. Chicago Avenue in the Wicker Park neighborhood. At the magical time of noon, I’ll be leading my “Hands-On HEKA” workshop on magic in ancient Egypt. Are you local? Come and say hello and sit for a (Greek Magical Papyri) spell, ha ha! 😉

The sacred talisman of the Tyet Knot, also called the Girdle of Isis.

I’m excited to be joining fellow Windy City Pagans, Polytheists, and Witches for a day of shared learning and networking! And the following weekend, the Chicago Fellowship of Isis community is having its 26th Annual Goddess Festival & Conference at Prop Thtr: a three-day event! Learn more on our Facebook page.

Dulce Domum, the Soul Returns Home: Last Night’s Fellowship of Isis Funeral Ceremony for Grendel the Cat

The reality is that grief from pet loss is not as easily ‘fixed’ as some would have us believe. It’s hard to live in grief that’s judged as unworthy. Grief is about love, and our animal companions often show us some of the most unconditional love we could ever experience. How often, despite our best efforts, do we absorb some of society’s judgments and think, I shouldn’t be grieving this much? Yet when we let these thoughts in, we betray our genuine feelings.

—Dr. David Kessler, You Can Heal Your Heart: Finding Peace After a Breakup, Divorce, or Death (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House Publishing, 2014), p. 136.

 

My role as cat midwife/cat mother has come full circle for my beloved Grendel: On September 21, 2007, I midwifed his feral birth in the woods behind my parents’ house; last night, June 11, 2019, I served as the death midwife who ushered him into the Spirit World after I made the heart-wrenching choice (given his Stage IV stomach cancer diagnosis less than 3 weeks ago) to have him euthanized at home sooner than I was expecting to.

Announcing the 26th Annual Fellowship of Isis Goddess Conference and Festival in Chicago!

Calling all Kemetic and Sumerian Polytheists, Reconstructionists, Polytheist Pagans, Tameran Wiccans, ceremonial magicians, Fellowship of Isis (FOI) members worldwide, devotees of the Gods of the Fertile Crescent, and friends! All are welcome to the 26th Annual Fellowship of Isis Goddess Conference and Festival in Chicago! I’m very excited to announce that, for the first time in our FOI Chicago community’s history, the event will span multiple days: Thursday, October 3, 2019 through Friday, October 5, and will feature a Pagan Cabaret! The location this year is the city’s acclaimed Prop Thtr, located at 3502 North Elston Avenue on the city’s north side.

Shining a Spotlight on Dark Nights of the Soul

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide Sea!

And Christ would take no pity on

My soul in agony.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, In Seven Parts” (1798), Part IV, lines 224-227

In my last post, I wrote about the beauty and the power of prayer and how it forms the core of my contemporary Polytheist devotional practice. But I certainly have had my challenges over the years in sustaining my practice, like any other religious person committed to devotional piety.  Whether the span lasted for weeks or even months on end, the spiritual crisis known as the “dark nights of the soul,” a term first coined by the sixteenth-century Spanish Counter-Reformation mystic known as St. John of the Cross, was a dreadful phenomenon I’ve endured many times.

Selqet: Ancient Egypt’s Scorpion Goddess

Editorial Note: This is the transcript of the presentation I gave on Saturday at the 25th Annual Fellowship of Isis in Chicago Goddess Convention. I added photos from my PowerPoint presentation and my references list.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this historic 25^th anniversary Goddess Festival commemorated by the Chicago FOI Community! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Anna Applegate, I’m an ordained Priestess, and as a Polytheist primarily dedicated to the Kemetic or Egyptian Pantheon of Gods in my personal spiritual practice, I am very excited to be talking to you about the mysterious and powerful Scorpion Goddess, Selqet. I love Her very much. She features prominently in my ancestor devotionals and in the Spirit Work that I do, and I am deeply honored to ritually invoke Her in our Main Liturgy this evening, “The Mystical Awakening of Scorpio and Kundalini.”  

The 25th Annual FOI Chicago Autumn Equinox Goddess Convention Is Less Than a Month Away!

On Saturday, September 22, the 25th Annual Fellowship of Isis Chicago Autumn Equinox Goddess Convention will convene, for the second straight year, at the Holiday Inn Chicago North Shore (Skokie) in the Skokie Banquet Room. On-site registration begins at 9:00 a.m., the doors officially open at 9:30, and several hours of workshops (details below) precede the performance of the Main Liturgy, set to begin at 5:45 p.m. CDT. This year’s Main Liturgy is “The Mystical Awakening of Scorpio and Kundalini,” honoring the Divine Shakti and Shiva, the Egyptian Goddess Selket, and the fixed stars in the constellation of Scorpio.

The scorpion-headed Selket, One of the Powers honored in this year’s Main Liturgy for the annual Fellowship of Isis Chicago Goddess Convention.

 

The Day’s Workshops and Performances

The $50 registration fee (if paid by September 8; it’s $60 at the door) treats one to a slew of workshops that precede the late afternoon’s Main Liturgy. Currently, this is the roster of speakers and topics:

Rev. Demetria Nanos: “Ma’at and Kundalini: Star Lore, Serpents, and Magic of Scorpio, Libra, Ophiuchus,” “Kundalini and Gods of Yoga in American History and Culture,” and “Mantra, Vidya, and Sound in Spiritual/Magical Practices”

Rev. Vincent Hawkins: “The Mystery of Evil,” “Prosperity Magic”

Aura Chapa: “Polytheistic Influences in ‘Steven Universe'” and “Hellenic Intersex Mysteries: The Mysteries of Agdistis and Hermaphroditus”

Martin Barba: “Western Tantra”

Tantra puja, (c) Martin Barba 2018. Used with permission. Visit martinbarba.com to learn more about Martin’s decades-long history of teaching Tantra.

Edward Farnham: “Himalayan Singing Bowls: A Cascade of Healing Sound”

Christine Zenino: “Healing the Past, Present, and Future with the Akashic Records”

I’m giving a talk and leading a mini ritual dedicated to the goddess Selket. Additionally, there will be a group Ancestor Shrine activity and a group talisman-making workshop, where participants can choose from making Vedic tattwa-based, ancient Egyptian hieroglyph-based, or Norse bind rune-based talismans.

The workshops run from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with a lunch break that lasts from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Workshops resume at 2 and last until 5:30, giving FOI Main Liturgy officiants (c’est moi) a chance to garb themselves accordingly before the rite begins.

 

Vendors and Silent Auction Items Too!

Fellowship of Isis Chicago is pleased to welcome the following metaphysical vendors and groups and artistic organizations supporting our 25th Annual Autumn Equinox Goddess Convention:

• Alchemy Arts Bookstore, Chicago
• Aum-Ha O.T.O Chicago
• Astrology by Victoria Martin
• Crystal Remedies by Steven Blaine Adams
• Life Force Arts Center, Chicago
• Harem of Oddities
• And my very own Etsy shop, JackalMoonDesigns

 

There will be dozens of unique, esoterically themed items (Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist ritual paraphernalia in particular) up for grabs in our Silent Auction, all of which are new and have been kindly donated by vendors and conference participants. From phurbas to bronze Deity statues to jewelry, there’s going to be something for everyone!

Brass phurba with dorje, featuring inlaid red coral and turquoise. Tibetan.

Tibetan clay statue of a Wrathful Deity slaying a demon.

 

Save $10 off Registration Now Thru Sept. 8 via PayPal

Early registration can be accommodated via PayPal: email $50 to Demetria Nanos at hail_isis@yahoo.com using “FOI Convention” in the Notes field. Alternatively, you can mail her a check in the amount of $50 with “Goddess Convention Registration” in the Memo field to:

Demetria Nanos, FOI Chicago, 1465 N. Leavitt Street, Chicago, IL 60622.

Questions? Call or leave a message at 773.684.9219.

 

Champagne and Chocolates Reception at the Hotel, Friday, September 21

All Goddess Convention participants who are available are welcome to meet at the hotel at 8 p.m. the night before the Convention for sparkling wine and conversation. We’re calling it our “Sweet Reunion with Health and Wealth.” We’ll also be having a guided meditation and oracle session.

 

Meet Us at Chicago Pagan Pride in Oak Park on September 9!

If the end of September is too long to wait to come say hello, stop by our Fellowship of Isis Chicago booth at Chicago Pagan Pride, which is held Sunday, September 9, at the lovely and historic (and, I might add, haunted) Pleasant Home in Oak Park. Pagan Pride runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Chicago Pagan Pride, 2013, when I co-led the Main Ritual with my friend and ritual partner, John Harness. Photo (c) Tomas Griddle, 2013. Used with permission.

 

Let’s Make It a September to Remember!

From my birthday on the 8th to Chicago Pagan Pride the following day to the 25th Anniversary Fellowship of Isis Chicago Goddess Convention on the 22nd, September is going to be an action-packed and wonderfully memorable month! Come join me in Sacred Space to help celebrate!

Blessings! / Seneb-ti!

I’m teaching my “Loving and Serving Dark Deities” Workshop at Alchemy Arts Tomorrow Night!

Cue the Norwegian death metal music score and strap on your dildos! It’s time for me to once again lead my popular workshop on the Great God Set and other “Dark” Deities! I’ll be speaking from 7 to 9 tomorrow night at Chicago’s awesome Alchemy Arts Bookstore, located at 1203 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue, where the owner has known me since I was a high school sophomore!

My Pieces Have Been Published in the Debut Issue of “Questing SET Digest”!

Dua, Sutekh! Hail, the Great God Set! Two of my writings expressing my devotion to the Mighty Son of Nut have been published in the newly released debut issue Questing SET Digest, which you can now buy on Amazon.

An annual periodical drawing from diverse occult, Setian, and Kemetic Polytheist voices from all over the world, Questing SET Digest is compiled by esoteric luminaries Judith Page and Don Webb. I can’t begin to describe how sumptuous a visual feast this 130-page publication is; I mean, just look at Judith’s amazing design for the cover:

Bretagne artist Alain Leroy illustrated my “Hymn to Set,” a layout so gorgeous I have to pinch myself as a reminder that it’s not all a dream!

This beautiful paperback belongs on every Kemetic devotee’s bookshelf! I am so honored to have been included in it and I look forward to submitting to next year’s digest also!

Seneb-ti! / Blessings!