I am a servant of Wepwawet.

(Among others.)

Wepwawet's Name means "Opener of the Way". He fulfils, in Egypt, the same sort of role as Legba in African Diaspora religions: He leads the way, opening the gates between the seen and unseen worlds so that others may reach through more readily. In the ancient world, His standard led parades and processions, marking the course.

What does being a servant of Wepwawet mean? (Especially, as before ranted, since I am not a priest?) It means that I am sensitive to possibility. People talk to me, and find that doing so opens doors for them, leads them to realisations that they might not have achieved so easily otherwise. That's the primary practical effect.

When I'm lost, I've known -- longer than I knew His name -- that when I turned the right way, I'd find the door. I've trusted my intuitions for a long time, knowing possibilities when I saw them. I have no real belief in dead ends; there are only wrong turns.

Then there's the homework.

Serving the jackal at the door means having doors in the mind. He keeps the seen and unseen twined together, letting things through both ways with a certain frequency and panache. It means that if some god wants a message handed through to someone who can't hear otherwise, They ask Him, and He opens up my head. The meaning is suddenly there, not my own, and half the time I have to formulate a way of getting it into words, with the sense of force leaning on me, waiting for me to come out with it.

(My favorite one of these was "Doubt is the tempering oil of the soul." That was Brighid.)

There's the writing: write this thing so that other people will be able to see their way. Make possibilities manifest. People aren't seeing these ways. I want that fixed. No, I don't have any advice on how to do it; that's your problem.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It, in other words.

It's a job. Sometimes there are arguments about the best way to do the job -- but in the end, it's me doing it, and it's me with the last word on what gets done. If I blow off the job too long, I get called into the office and bitched out about my attitude. I bet They'd fire me if I made too much of a mess of it, too.

I get frustrated when the job is treated like a blessing or a gift, something that is bestowed as a reward for worthiness or something. Frankly, I'm not especially worthy or especially capable; as human beings know, I know a number who are better. But this is the job I've got, and I'm doing what I can with it. It doesn't make me a better person, except insofar as sometimes I get work of type, "Look, employee, shape up a bit, hey?" (And I still have to do the work of shaping up.) It's not superiority. It's just the job I have in the system.

You want a job in the system? Well, having a broke-open head is one job. It's the one I put in an application for a long time ago, actually, before I learned the sort of work it was. But it's not the only job there is.

Manifest the virtues of your gods in your living. Do you follow one who does music? Do music. Do you follow a just warrior? Do justice. Do you follow one of beauty? Be beautiful. Create beauty. Do you follow one who demands growth, even through pain? Persevere. Do you follow one who brings about the harvest? Plant you seeds.

Does your religion have ritual structures? Do you have actions that encourage the sun to rise, the year to cycle? Do those.

Do you have a calling to serve as a butler in the house of the gods? That doesn't require a broke-open head either. To aid the children of the gods? That doesn't need a broke-open head. To build Them homes? Shrines? To make offerings? None of these require a broke-open head.

Having a broke-open head is just one thing. There are times it's a real pain; there are times it's a real joy. But it's just one possible component to a path, and choosing it means not having space for other possible things. Don't sell what you have to offer the world and the gods short or pine after having a broke-open head; it's not all joyous communion with the transcendental light, it's a job. It's not somehow more glamorous or important than any of the other thousands of possible jobs in the system there are; all the jobs need to be done.