Kemet Online: Followers of The Religion of Ancient Egypt: John/Isep Reflections

Em hotep, all. *bow*

I did not really have a personal relationship with Isep. I didn't know much about him before he came here to do the New Members Class -- though I recognized the name because I knew of him through other people in the wider Kemetic community, and the effects he had on them. I think he made a few comments on posts I made in group Kemetic journals on livejournal, in a friendly and interested tone, as I introduced myself as strongly connected to Sekhmet, and he felt himself so as well. I'm not sure he would have recognized my name if you asked him.

I was not auditing the NMC he was taking a part of until after the chaos had mostly run its course. I found about it from a link in the livejournal of someone in my friends list, and traced the way things fell out from the point of view of the self-perceived injured parties (Amy, Alan and John) and their friends. I talked about it with Andy, whom I'd just introduced to KOL and Per Ankh recently, and who was in the same NMC. I soon after called the priests and wound up being given access to the NMC boards, and went to see the seeds of the controversy that had so quickly gone wildly out of hand. And then I was also here when his criminal activities came to public light, and the emotional turmoil in the wake of that.

So I'm not very connected to him at all, but I have a point of view on events that I haven't seen expressed and that might be helpful to some -- so here is how I feel.

The single thing that made me angriest about his actions is that he did so many of them in Sekhmet's name. "Well, I'm Sekhmet's son and I'm wreaking needful destruction, I know She loves me and I think She approves of my actions because She's never stopped me, and it's the kind of thing She might do Herself if She were here. I'm acting as Her agent. She really wants me to do it."

That was simply an unconsciable insult and how DARE he profane Sekhmet's, MY MOTHER'S name in using it to justify his selfish and power-hungry actions when really they stood against Ma'at, against everything Sekhmet protects? Just because encounters you cause are bloody and painful does not make them sacred just because you choose to serve a goddess who once served justice in a bloody and painful way.

It made me righteously furious.

But. . . I really felt that he was indeed beloved by Sekhmet, and that he at least in large part, consciously, really believed in the justifications in Her name. He didn't have the perspective to see how these justifications appeared so very wrong to others.

So, I asked myself why Sekhmet let him get away with such a perversion of what She represents.

And what I came up with is that he was in serious backlash from growing up in some abusive situation where he was helpless. He was integrating Sekhmet's example of personal power in such a way that made him swing to the opposite extreme, of being wildly overassertive -- and that this had to run its course and burn itself out before he could step back and say "Yeah, I went out of control for a while," and begin picking up the pieces of his life and reassessing them in a mature and responsible way. He had to mirror Sekhmet's coming to balance after going to extremes -- Her curtailing his ability to do this would be much less productive in the end (forcing an awareness of its limits and his ultimate helplessness) than if he came to the realization that he really WAS powerful and had been using it wrongly, and had the ability to use it in better ways, on his own.

So in a way he WAS acting as a model of Sekhmet's energy in the world, but what was really being destroyed and who the example was really meant for weren't what he thought. He wasn't "showing them", HE was the one who ultimately had to see it in himself. The people he hurt weren't really improvement projects of Sekhmet's, they were more or less bystanders, casualties incurred in Her improvement project that was himself.

Even though he wasn't sensitive to the reason why his justifications so bothered others, and maybe not to the fact that the justifications were a problem in themselves, he knew that ACTIONS upset people a whole lot. In some way he took a perverse pride in being pushed away by people because of what he did. It seemed to tell him he was doing his job, and that the pain of being separated from people he really cared about and whose approval he desperately craved was the necessary price to be paid for being an agent of Sekhmet. It let him feel competent. It made him feel that there was some higher purpose in doing what he did, the only thing he'd figured out how to do well -- and he *needed* that purpose because he didn't think there was any way for him to learn how to do something more constructive, anything else in which he could be competent.

I think he needed that sense of purpose very much, because deep down, he really didn't think he was a nice person at all or that what he was doing was right. . . and that he was regretful of this, and that he felt there was nothing else in his power to do.

I think that intensity of his need for purpose and his repressed but simmering regret made him turn a blind eye to the logical flaws in the argument shoring up his justifications. And I think that as time went on he was becoming less and less able to do so.

Maybe if the law hadn't caught up with him when it did, he might have been in a place to make a breakthrough and see what he was really doing, and be able to reach out to others to try to get help to face that, and find some new more constructive way to deal with his life.

But if he was in that vulnerable limbo of mind where he couldn't really believe what he'd loudly been telling himself and others for so long, but didn't yet have something else to believe that didn't utterly shred his self-esteem, he didn't have the chance to address it. His past came to reckon with him before he was ready. He ran, and he fell back on the emotional self-defense mechanisms he'd been using so long, even if they didn't work so well anymore. They were better than stepping out into the void. Physical day-to-day survival came first, evading those who were trying to capture him.

Maybe what killed him was his realization that the arguments he'd been using to prop up his sense of self were weak and broken. And he felt so terribly alone, from having pushed away so many people, and for not being able to reach out to those who still cared enough to want to talk, because he was a fugitive and there was no way to make contact that wouldn't give himself away and quite possibly hurt them. And perhaps he'd woken up to how much he'd already hurt them unwittingly, and was half-paralyzed by the shame, so maybe even if it was safe he wouldn't have been able to make himself reach out.

And he didn't see any hope in a future where his worldview was shattered and he was imprisoned, so he destroyed that future, and probably hoped to destroy his own sense of awareness in the doing.

I don't think he was running towards the Beautiful West. I think that he was in a place where he'd feel the pannier of the scales bearing his heart would probably drop and hit the floor clattering. While the Devourer would provide permanent oblivion such as he craved. . . he would have to disappoint all of his gods in person before that, and be totally aware of the process all the while.

I think when he found his back to the wall, he looked to Sekhmet for aid, but his illusions fell away and all he could see was her true terrible power, a bloody sword in Her hands, and quail in fear -- not seeing the depths of love and compassion in Her eyes.

I think he lost faith in Netjer because he looked at himself honestly and deeply for the first time in a long time and loathed what he saw. How could gods who see so much more than mortals possibly love him, and if for some reason They did, how on earth could he respect Them -- he couldn't love himself, and he had the most to get out of that from sheer unavoidable self-interest!

And so he died, destroying himself.

Of course, this is all really just extrapolation. I don't know, we'll probably never know. But it feels right to me. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit -- but I don't think that in life he ever really gave himself enough credit, more just shows of bravado he didn't entirely believe himself.

I didn't know him well, but something in Isep made me like him, even when he was behaving like a jerk a lot of the time. I felt there was good in him, waiting to come out someday. It might still come out, but we won't see it in this world. I truly felt he was one of Sekhmet's and that She loved him, even if the reasons weren't apparent to anyone else. Maybe only humans need reasons to love. In some sense, however distant and strained, he felt like a brother to me.

When I heard he committed suicide to evade the authorities, I was angry and annoyed. I felt that for one who claimed to serve Sekhmet, to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of one's actions was to basically slap Ma'at across the face. A final insult, a final turning of the back on what he claimed to serve.

I don't feel that way anymore. I'm sad. And maybe I have a certain level of commiseration with him because I have myself contemplated suicide, more than once -- even after Netjer entered my life. I know how it feels to believe that the only way to end unbearable pain is to exit this life. I have come to abhor the idea as a terrible waste and a wound to people who have known the person, even glancingly. You can never tell the full effects you have on the lives of people you touch. But nonetheless -- I think being in that emotional place gives a level of understanding that is impossible to fully attain otherwise, and never goes away.

I didn't have all these insights into Isep's possible perspectives before I started to write this, only a couple. The writing made things come clear as it happened, flow. I'm not sure it's from me. It wouldn't be the first time. That's how my writing often works, scary as it is for me.

I feel that his ka still exists. I think he's aware of a lot of what we are saying and doing in regards to him.

I feel in some way that he's near me now, that he is stunned --- and tearful if kas can weep -- at the amount of compassion and understanding and affection he's inspired in someone he barely knew, wasn't aware of, and who mostly got to see his most negative side.

Maybe I'm being an avatar of Sekhmet in this, I don't know.

In the ear of my mind, I feel I hear him saying "Thank you."

Make of it what you will.

I burn a candle to light your way on the paths of the Amduat, brother, next to my image of Sekhmet who walks with us both.

-- Llyne Merytamon.

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You can surrender
Without a prayer
But never really pray
Pray without surrender -- Rush

Llyne Burton, Priest Candidate
Per Ankh: The Traditional Religion of Ancient Egypt
http://www.per-ankh.org