THE RISING FIREFLY ARCHIVES EXCERPT- FIREFLY 78: Holy Days of the Holiday Season
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When a child wants to find the roots, they sit under the tree.
- Kemetic Wisdom
The cold season contains what is today referred to as the holiday season. When one considers how the current holiday hoopla appears, you may be surprised to learn that it finds its roots in an interesting and sacred place. The season’s association with holidays and its evident drop in temperature and active life can be brought back to one place: The God Wsr Unnefer Kersheta (Osiris, the Beneficent Keeper of the Mysteries).
Though many have become aware that any intrinsic value one could claim for our modern holidays has been sold to corporations for its potential commercial gains, the value the season really seems to bring nowadays is giving our relatives paid leave so that families can reunite and share in each other’s time and presence. So, Afrocentric communities have tried to replace the commercial Christmas season with Kwanzaa, a series of days that follow the lead of the Jewish Hanukkah and highlight a communal value that families and communities can give their attention to during their time together.
But what is the value of continuing to search for new paths in our current situation when reality has already become so confused by the new reasons, market schemes and claims that our political leaders (whether corporate or governmental) have given to what we do? Should we really even try to pave a new path before understanding why it is we are doing what we are doing in the first place?
Today’s holiday season, which has the power to bring us together, consists of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November (28th of 2019), a day to honor the birth of a religious savior (Christmas – December 25th) and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day when we close one period and begin the next, inviting our year end reviews, plans, projections or resolutions. Important notions of gratitude, birth and new cycles have become chances to spend money on big elaborate meals, fancy decorations, awe inspiring gifts and relentless partying. But, where did these notions come from?
Death of Wsr - 17th of Ateeri
Using the Sidereal Calendar (humanity’s original calendar), the Kemetic temples have observed the 17th of Ateeri (or roughly November 26th) as the anniversary of the God Wsr’s (also known as the Ancestral God father of humanity) death. Because Wsr, a Divine being, chose to die, he opened up the cycle of life, death and rebirth or resurrection to the existence. Wsr therefore gave to humanity, as well as the animal and vegetal kingdoms (all of which function on that cycle of life), a chance to exist. In doing so, he took responsibility for the wellbeing, education and survival of humanity because it was through humanity that his spirit could itself resurrect. Because of the role he played in our existence, civilization and survival, the anniversary of his death has always been known as the saddest day of the year. Though we are grateful for his life, the day is spent fasting, mourning and lamenting his death. His death marks the day that his energies are no longer influential on Earth and around the planet. From that day vegetal life recedes into the root, animals hibernate or hide themselves from the cold and human beings are more susceptible to destructive energies, due to the lack of his energetic presence.
According to the Holy Drama (the sacred text that gives account of Wsr’s cycles of existence) when Wsr was first killed, it took a period of time before his sister-wife Aishat (Isis) located his body and assisted him in finishing his mission on Earth. It was only after that, that his spirit could begin travelling in order to create the World of the Dead. This period of time between Wsr’s death and his journey to the afterlife is reflected in the Sidereal Calendar. The day of his death is followed by a period of thirty-seven days before his embalmment and burial and only on the fortieth day after his death does his journey to the hidden world (Imentet) begin.
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