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May you spend lifetime with your gods, pleased with you without displaying anger.
May your reward be received after old age.
[…]
May you enter your tomb of the necropolis and mingle with the excellent Bas. May you be judged among them and be declared righteous in Busiris before Wennefer and be well established in Abydos before Shu-Onuris.
May you cross over to the district of Peqer in the god’s retinue and cross the divine region in the retinue of Sokar.
May you join the crew of the Neshmet barque without being turned away. May you see the sun in the sky when it initiates the year.
[…]
May you be triumphant in the sky, a shining one.
[…]
 May you transform yourself into whatever you wish, like the phoenix, with each of your forms being that of a god, just as you desire.
“
—    Quoted from: Ancient Egyptian Tombs: The Culture of Life and Death © 2011 Steven Snape.(Translation from Papyrus Anastasi I, based on that of Wente 1990:100-1 (Wente,E.(1990) “Letters from Ancient Egypt”)




Is your ultimate idea of paradise to spend your eternity with chosen deity, to enter the sacred marriage, hierogamy of the soul? Some people follow the path of spells that will make them take permanent residence on the fields of Offerings with Osiris but Coffin text spells of the Book of the Two Ways were written especially for "hermopolitan devotion". The selected few CT spells are precisely aimed at making your residence "in the mansion of the Moon" and joining the suite of all devotees of Djehuty who want to "admire his beauty all the time". And why wouldn’t you? When you start a devotional relationship with a deity, it means you align your soul and desires with that deity’s values and personality - and, with all deep and core aspects, not simply something that lies on the surface. You undergo a transformation with each divinity you touch.

The start of the Egyptian year was the First month of the Inundation (named Dhwty) and was a time of great celebration, coinciding with the rising of the Nile. “You shall follow Thoth, on that beautiful day of the start of Inundation.”
During this month there were three festivals for Thoth, held on the 4th, 19th and 21st. Entries from various calendars give the following descriptions of these feast days. 4th day - a “Festival of Thoth”. 19th day - a “Festival for Thoth, the very great, in the whole country”. [...] 21st day - a festival to “celebrate ‘the triumph of Thoth’ in the presence of Re”. [...]
Bomhard suggests that the first day of the new year, which coincided with the rising of Sirius, was the 19th July.
This would give the festivals in Dhwty the following modern dates; the 4th as the 22nd of July, the 19th and 21st as the 6th and 8th of August and the 26th as the 13th of August.  (Quoted from: -- Lesley Jackson "Thoth, the history of Ancient-Egyptian God of Wisdom)

For this festival day, I'd like to share some of my devotional poetry...

When at 15 and decided that I need to join a religion, if I had not chosen to join the most mainstream branch of Christianity in Russia, if I had not read this famous protestant prayer too - “Jesus, be my Lord and Savior”… I would not be what I am today. I would be a totally different person.
I remember these moments of “accepting Jesus” very well.
I have read this prayer twice; I valued this experience as something indeed important and I remember very well my thoughts and feelings.
Yes, I read the prayer of my own free will-- but did I want it with the whole of my heart? Did I have trust in Jesus-the-personal-savior 100%?
Fortunately (or not very fortunately) I remember my religious experiences and adventures very brightly, just as in Dumbledore’s magical pensieve.

Religion is always a choice. There are people raised in particular religions (or lack of them) since childhood, and it’s very natural for them to accept the beliefs of their parents/family as part of their cultural identity- something that isn’t questioned. But as the kid becomes a teen and then an adult – there are points of maturation – there are moments when religion then becomes a choice, when one reaches a point where you can accept a religion whole-heartedly (either self-chosen, or in keeping with one’s cultural surroundings and expectations).
And this is always a personal mystery and a turning point for a believer.

My personal spiritual journey started, when I was 12 years old.

There are people who were raised in religion, and the idea that God exists is therefore very natural for them.

But I was raised in soviet-style secular atheism. I had read a lot of things about religions, but the default mindset ingrained from childhood, was that “religion is a human invention, and an instrument of oppression and control. Gods are just mythology.”

When I was 15, I joined Russian Orthodox Church (mostly because I was baptized there when I was a kid and it seemed like a natural decision), but left it in 2005 to become Roman Catholic. However, the existence of the Gods of Egypt (Netjeru) was shown to me in obvious experience - and now I’m trying to live with it.

As I see it, there are three pillars of the Kemetic religion(s), in all its (or their) many forms. These pillars are:  The gods, the practices, and the concept of ma'at. It is this third, ma'at, that I will be discussing in this particular post.

Ma'at is often translated as Truth, Justice, Good, Order, or Cosmic Order. It is all of those things at once, in a way that can't be adequately conveyed with any one of the above English words or phrases.  For the Egyptians, the stability of the cosmos was not a fundamentally different thing from a king ruling justly. They were both manifestations of ma'at, and the lack thereof (an unstable cosmos, an unjust king, with the resulting disorder in the land) would be considered a lack of ma'at, and signs of  its opposite, isfet (often translated as "evil" or "disorder".)