Perspective

Human perspective is a powerful force. It shapes our lives by shaping the way we perceive our world. It amazes and humbles me to know that there are as many forms of that power as there are individuals on this planet. I think it could be well argued that the sheer diversity of our perspectives is one of the greatest achievements of our species, second only to our discovery of a means of communicating those perspectives to others: language. At its roots, the blogging movement is all about that linguistic exchange of personal world-view. We learn and gain wisdom by peering through one another’s eyes for brief moments. It may well be the pursuit of that kind of inter-human understanding keeps us coming back to these online streams of personal thoughts.

For a while I have kept an online journal which recorded my random musings and, occasionally, when I was feeling ambitious, my religious insights into the world around me. My faith is a large part of who I am, so my wanderings into the realm of theology were hardly out of keeping with the tone of my journal. For years, I meandered back and forth between idle chatter and something decidedly more serious. Then I began to feel a need for a division of content. I’ve felt a need to collect my very serious religious writings into a single place, a place where the sole purpose was to record and relate those ideas, and their effects on my life, to others. In short, I wanted to delve deeper than “today I went shopping” and into the realm of more meaningful blogging. The Setian and the Feather was born from that desire.

I am an American 20-something living in that great immoral center of commerce and ‘entertainment’ known as Las Vegas. “Sin City”, to some, though the parts of it I see on a day to day basis are decidedly less exciting. What happens here may stay here, but the people who live here often don’t, which creates a very transient environment that does not foster long term relationships. In fact, Vegas abhors a past, and actively seeks to tear down and replace anything which is more than a decade old. It surprises me sometimes, that I’ve chosen to live in a city so irreverent of history.

I have a great respect for history, more specifically, the history of Ancient Egypt. Or as I call it in the old Egyptian language: Kemet. I am Kemetic by faith. A modern practitioner of a religion that died thousands of years ago. A follower of forgotten gods and a keeper of wisdom long lost to the passage of time and the all consuming desert sands. I am an old soul in a new world, struggling to match what I know from my religious study to what I see around me.

This blog will follow that journey, and if you would like to come along for the ride, even if only for a few moments, to glimpse the world through the eyes of a child of the old ways: Em Hotep, as we say in my faith. I cherish the company.