A visitor during Senut
Halfway through the offering formula this morning, I heard the cat flap. My own cat was asleep on my pillow at the time.¹
The neighbor's grey tabby, who has never once come inside in two years, walked past me, sat directly in front of Bast's statue on the bookshelf shrine, blinked at her slowly, then turned around and blinked at me.
I finished the rite with a guest. Water, bread, incense (cone, ceramic dish, window cracked). When I reverted the offerings afterwards she accepted a small corner of the bread and left the way she came.
¹ I checked twice. Mine slept through the entire visit, which I am choosing to read as professional courtesy between cats.
Dua Bast.
Drew kyō, bad luck, at the shrine today. Tied the slip to the rack and left it with the kami to sort out, as is proper. Bought a mochi on the way out to balance things.
Lapis for Djehuty, carnelian for Bast (with footnotes)
Updated the shrine stones this week: a small lapis lazuli on Djehuty's side, a carnelian on Bast's.
Footnote 1: lapis didn't come from Egypt at all. It was traded all the way from the mountains of Badakhshan, in what's now Afghanistan, which tells you how much it was prized. Some texts describe the gods' hair as made of lapis.
Footnote 2: carnelian turns up everywhere in Egyptian jewellery and amulets. Its warm red-orange felt right for Bast, who is fierce and cozy in equal measure, rather like the cat currently asleep on my keyboard.
Footnote 3: I paid $14 for both. The pharaohs would weep.
Pebbles that become a boulder
Many shrines in Japan keep a sazare-ishi, a big lump of rock made of small pebbles cemented together over ages. It's named for an old poem about little pebbles slowly growing into a great boulder, with moss covering it.
I'd never take a stone from shrine grounds; those belong where they are. But on my last visit home, at the river below my grandmother's village, she pointed at the water and told me to choose one. I picked a small grey pebble and wrapped it in washi.
It sits below my kamidana now. Some days it reminds me of patience. Some days it just reminds me of her hand, pointing at the river.